A rescuer at the scene on Broad Stand. Photo: Wasdale MRT

A walker had a lucky escape when he fell at a Lake District mountain accident blackspot.

Rescuers spent eight hours bringing the man and his companion to safety from England’s second-highest peak on Tuesday.

Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team was alerted about 3pm after the incident on Broad Stand.

Richard Warren of the team said: “A call came in from two walkers on Scafell. One had slipped and taken a fall over a rock step and although uninjured could not climb back up to his friend.

“With light fading, lowering cloud and surrounding areas loose and extremely slippery they wisely called the police on 999 and requested urgent help from mountain rescue.”

Mr Warren said 15 team members made their way on to the mountain, loaded with nearly 300m of climbing and lowering rope and crag gear. “Half of the team ascended to the summit of Scafell and made the extremely treacherous descent in thick cloud – visibility down to 3m – back down to what is one of the Wasdale teams’s accident blackspots.

“The walkers were stuck in a very exposed and dangerous location above Broad Stand, a steep craggy descent located on the Eskdale side of Scafell.

Broad Stand, where the incident took place. Photo: Bob Smith/grough

“Due to the location of the two walkers, separated vertically by around 50m, it was necessary to set up abseils using around 160m of rope. They were eventually located by their shouts and torch beams.

“They were made safe, recovered to a more stable section of the mountain and eventually lowered, one at a time, down the 8m vertical drop to the safety of the Mickledore ridge, where a receiving party was waiting.”

He said the two walkers were then taken down to Wasdale Head in a ‘relatively straightforward’ descent.

The rescue ended about 11pm at the team’s Gosforth base where wet ropes and gear were checked, sorted and put in the drying room.

Broad Stand is the shortest route between Scafell and Scafell Pike, but involves a difficult and exposed scramble and has been the scene of fatal falls in the past.

One of the earliest recorded descents of Broad Stand was by Lake Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1802, who used the route to escape Scafell in a gathering storm.

A safer descent for walkers can be made by heading east from the summit of Scafell or south-east from Symonds Knott to Foxes Tarn, from where a less exposed gully leads to the Mickledore path on the Eskdale side of the massif.