Lake District Mountain Rescue: The Data Report
A clear, honest picture of mountain rescue in the Lake District — how often the volunteer teams are called out, by whom and why, and how the numbers are actually counted. Every figure here is from a published source, dated, and tagged with the basis it was counted on. The point isn’t to alarm; it’s to respect the work, and to help you not become a statistic.
Before the numbers
I’ve never had to call a mountain rescue team out — and you never really know how ready you are to make that call until the day you need to. Two moments brought home what these volunteers give.
Coming down off High Street by Rough Crag one blazing afternoon, we reached Mardale Head just as a team was gearing up to head the other way — up. As we stood there with our cold drinks, we watched them shoulder heavy kit and a stretcher and start climbing, all of them, into the heat, without hesitation. We were, collectively, in awe. That is the reality behind the numbers below.
Read this first
These are real injuries, real deaths and real unpaid volunteers. We use published, official figures only, never name individuals, and never claim a cause the sources don’t. Where bodies count differently, we show a range and state the basis — see methodology.
The headline numbers
Across England & Wales in 2025, Mountain Rescue was called out 3,968 times — up from 3,842 in 2024 — leading to 3,175 team deployments, with just three days in the whole year passing without a call-out (in 2024, the first such year, there was a call-out every single day). The Lake District’s teams handled 900 of those incidents between them, and four Lakeland teams now rank among the ten busiest in the country.
Cards marked with care or shown as a range are exactly where the counting basis matters — read them with the methodology in mind.
How call-outs have risen
The long-run direction is clearly up — about a third higher across England & Wales than the 2,973 recorded in 2019 (MREW (opens in new tab)) — driven mostly by more people heading for the hills. The Lakeland trend tracks it, with 2025 the highest yet: 3,968 call-outs nationally and 900 in the Lakes.
Show the data table
| Year | Call-outs | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2,973 | MREW national, callouts | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| 2020 | 3,080 | MREW national, callouts (COVID year, regionally very uneven) | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| 2023 | 3,462 | MREW national; 47 teams; only 9 callout-free days | Hefted - Dispatches from Cumbria (John Manning), quoting LDSAMRA/MREW spokespeople (opens in new tab) |
| 2024 | 3,842 | MREW national; first year with a callout every day | Ordnance Survey (visualising MREW 2024 data) (opens in new tab) |
| 2025 | 3,968 | MREW national; 3,968 call-outs resulting in 3,175 deployments; 3 days in the year without a call-out | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
Show the data table
| Year | Call-outs | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 656 | LDSAMRA total; inflated by the 'Beast from the East' snow event | Hefted - Dispatches from Cumbria (John Manning), quoting LDSAMRA/MREW spokespeople (opens in new tab) |
| 2019 | 659 | LDSAMRA regional total (MREW table) | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| 2020 | 568 | LDSAMRA regional total (MREW table); COVID lockdowns suppressed numbers | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| 2023 | 714 | LDSAMRA total (999 calls); record at the time | Hefted - Dispatches from Cumbria (John Manning), quoting LDSAMRA/MREW spokespeople (opens in new tab) |
| 2024 | 813-927 | LDSAMRA total; 813 (full deployments) to 927 (999 calls); ~780 quoted mid-December; record year, ~20% up on 2023 by end Nov | Times and Star (opens in new tab) |
| 2025 | 900 | LDSAMRA total, MREW per-team incident tally Jan-Dec 2025 (sum of the 11 area teams incl. COMRU) | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
The Lakeland teams
Mountain rescue in the Lakes is provided by twelve volunteer teams under LDSAMRA (opens in new tab). For the first time the 2025 review publishes a count for every one of them — so here is how the teams compare, and how they sit among the busiest in the whole of England & Wales.
Show the data table
| Team | Call-outs (2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Wasdale | 154 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Langdale Ambleside | 151 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Keswick | 138 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Patterdale | 105 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Cockermouth | 92 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Coniston | 71 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Kendal | 70 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Penrith | 50 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Duddon & Furness | 38 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Kirkby Stephen | 30 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
Show the data table
| Team | Region | Share of E&W call-outs |
|---|---|---|
| Llanberis | Eryri (Snowdonia), Wales | 9% |
| Ogwen Valley | Eryri (Snowdonia), Wales | 5% |
| Wasdale | Lake District | 5% |
| Central Beacons | South Wales | 4% |
| Langdale Ambleside | Lake District | 4% |
| Edale | Peak District | 4% |
| Keswick | Lake District | 3% |
| Patterdale | Lake District | 3% |
| Brecon | South Wales | 3% |
| Buxton | Peak District | 3% |
What call-outs involve
The leading reason for a 2025 call-out was a simple slip or trip (22% of incidents), followed by searching for a missing person (18%); most rescues — 82% — involved attending an injured person. But the review also records the factors behind incidents, and they tell a sharper story: judgement and inexperience lead, well ahead of the weather.
Show the data table
| Contributory factor | Incidents (2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Poor decision-making / human error | 939 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Inexperience for the activity | 644 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Weather (rain, wind, snow, ice, heat) | 518 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Equipment failure / poorly equipped | 241 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Tired, fatigued or unfit | 199 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
| Poor visibility | 138 | Mountain Rescue England and Wales (opens in new tab) |
The fastest-growing group needing help shifted from the 50–54 bracket in 2019 to 18–24-year-olds (from Ordnance Survey’s analysis of the 2024 figures). Mountain Rescue and OS link this to social-media honeypots and over-reliance on phone navigation apps — their interpretation of a correlation, not a proven cause.
Why call-outs are rising
Call-outs are up by around a third across England & Wales since 2019 (MREW (opens in new tab)), and rising in the Lakes too. The teams are clear that the single biggest driver is simply more people on the hills — but they point to a few things shaping who needs help, and how often. These are the rescue bodies’ own explanations; we report them as attributed views, not proven causes.
- Social-media ‘honeypots’. Beauty spots that go viral on TikTok and Instagram draw people to places beyond their experience. MREW’s CEO links the rise partly to locations “promoted and shared on social media” (Ordnance Survey / MREW (opens in new tab)); one report frames it as “TikTok tourism” (Emergency Services Times (opens in new tab)).
- Apps in place of skills. Navigation apps that are “not always suitable for an outdoor environment” (OS / MREW (opens in new tab)) — people follow a popular line online without the hazards or the context.
- A younger, less-prepared profile. MREW reports a roughly two-fold rise in rescues of 18–25-year-olds over five years, and a shift towards visitors who are “less well prepared” (Emergency Services Times (opens in new tab)).
- Sheer volume. Busy teams now turn out for as many as six separate incidents in a single day (Emergency Services Times (opens in new tab)); the BMC describes teams as “dangerously close to breaking point” (the BMC (opens in new tab)).
The honest summary is the unglamorous one: more people, often less prepared, amplified by social media. Correlation isn’t proof, and the teams are careful not to blame any single cause. But one thing is not in doubt — preparation works, and it is free. The patterns above are exactly what our guides to navigation, first aid on the fells and starting out are built to address.
Fatalities, in context
This is the part to read slowly. Each number is a person.
Show the data table
| Year | Fatalities | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 14 | LDSAMRA region | ITV News Border (opens in new tab) |
| 2024 | 32 | LDSAMRA region | ITV News Border (opens in new tab) |
| — | ~20.9 | Long-run average (context) | Hefted - Dispatches from Cumbria (John Manning), quoting LDSAMRA/MREW spokespeople (opens in new tab) |
No Lake-District-specific fatality total has been published for 2025 yet, so the latest regional figure is 2024’s. Across the whole of England & Wales, the fatal-incident protocol was invoked 71 times in 2025 — a national count, and not the same as a confirmed number of deaths.
What this means for you
The patterns in this data are also a quietly useful safety briefing. Most trouble happens at weekends and later in the day — Saturday and Sunday alone account for 42% of incidents, and the three busiest months (May, June and August) for another 33%; in the 2024 analysis, 78% of England & Wales call-outs came after noon — Ordnance Survey, visualising the same MREW data, note that the busiest time of day is mid-afternoon as people descend from the hills. (Those busiest months are summer months — the season’s specific hazards, from heat and cold water to lightning and cattle, are ranked by evidence in Summer on the Fells.) Behind those incidents, the factors logged most often are poor decisions, inexperience and the weather. Each is something you can shift the odds on before you leave the car:
- Start early, set a turn-back time. The single best hedge against the after-midday peak.
- Carry a map and compass and know how to use them — phones die and apps mislead. See the Lake District navigation guide.
- Pack for a fall and a wait. A small first-aid kit and the know-how: first aid for the fells.
- Build up gradually and don’t split the group — ‘avoidable’ callouts from parties separating are a recurring theme. New to the hills? Start with how to start hiking.
The hills themselves are changing, too: our companion Lake District climate report puts sourced numbers on sixty years of warmer, wetter, less-frozen fells — and what that means on the hill.
Every team, mapped
An interactive map with a marker for each of the ten area teams; every team also appears, with its link, in the table below.
Why this isn’t abstract to me
These are fells I’ve walked, so this map isn’t abstract to me. The second moment came in conversation: on Calf Crag I got talking with another walker about how some route-builders string together lines that have no business being followed — and Broad Stand came up. He told me about a young lad who tried it, fell and was badly hurt, and how the team got him off the crag and away. I’ve never forgotten it. Wasdale’s patch takes in Broad Stand and Scafell; Patterdale’s takes in the High Street ground above Mardale Head where we watched that team set off. Knowing who covers this country changes how you walk it.
| Team | Broad area covered | Latest published callouts |
|---|---|---|
| Keswick MRT (opens in new tab) | Skiddaw, Blencathra, Borrowdale, the north-western and central fells | 138 (2025) |
| Wasdale MRT (opens in new tab) | Wasdale, Scafell Pike, Scafell, Great Gable, the western fells | 154 (2025) |
| Langdale Ambleside MRT (opens in new tab) | Great and Little Langdale, the Langdale Pikes, Ambleside, the central fells | 151 (2025) |
| Patterdale MRT (opens in new tab) | Ullswater, Helvellyn, Striding Edge, the eastern fells | 105 (2025) |
| Duddon & Furness MRT (opens in new tab) | Duddon Valley, the Coniston and south-western fells, Furness | 38 (2025) |
| Coniston MRT (opens in new tab) | Coniston Old Man, the Coniston fells, Tilberthwaite | 71 (2025) |
| Cockermouth MRT (opens in new tab) | The north-western fells, Buttermere, Lorton, the Loweswater area | 92 (2025) |
| Kendal MSRT (opens in new tab) | The south-eastern fells, Kentmere, the Howgills fringe, the south of the county | 70 (2025) |
| Penrith MRT (opens in new tab) | The northern and eastern Pennine fringe, the Eden valley, Cross Fell and the North Pennines | 50 (2025) |
| Kirkby Stephen MSRT (opens in new tab) | The upper Eden valley, Mallerstang, the Howgills and the eastern Pennine moors | 30 (2025) |
| Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs (LDMRSD) (opens in new tab) | Specialist air-scenting search dogs, deployed across all LDSAMRA teams | 14 (2025) |
| Cumbria Ore Mines Rescue Unit (COMRU) (opens in new tab) | Specialist underground / disused-mine rescue across Cumbria | 1 (2025) |
Is enough being done?
Here is the part that should give every hill-goer pause. The teams that turned out 3,968 times across England & Wales in 2025 — more often, the BMC notes, than some paid emergency services (the BMC (opens in new tab)) — receive no direct, routine government funding. They run on donations, fundraising and legacies (House of Commons Library (opens in new tab)).
England & Wales has had only occasional one-off help — for example £148,407 shared between 11 teams in 2020 (House of Commons Library (opens in new tab)). Set against a workload up roughly a quarter since 2019, that is a thin safety net under a service the state would otherwise have to provide and pay for.
There has, though, been real movement. The 2025 Autumn Budget exempted search-and-rescue vehicles from Vehicle Excise Duty (worth roughly £2,000 a team a year from 2027); an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Volunteer Search and Rescue was formed in June 2025; and MREW has set up its own operational support fund.
The issue reached the floor of Parliament in a Westminster Hall debate on 22 April 2026 (Hansard (opens in new tab)). MPs described mountain rescue as a de facto “fourth emergency service” — its 3,000-plus volunteers no longer just rescuing walkers but giving first aid, backing up ambulance trusts at major incidents, and helping the police with missing-person searches and flood response — and returned to the same structural gap: 47 unfunded teams, a record workload, and visitors increasingly drawn to the hills by striking footage online without grasping the conditions. The all-party group set out clear, low-cost asks:
- Reservist-style status for volunteers — the same legal footing as Army reservists or special constables, so they are not out of pocket in lost wages for answering a weekday call-out, and get paid leave for training.
- Financial relief — Crown indemnity insurance cover, and VAT exemption on rescue vehicles (building on the new road-tax exemption).
- A dedicated Minister to engage directly with volunteer search-and-rescue organisations.
Our view
It is hard to look at a still-rising workload — carried for free, at a deficit, by unpaid charities doing work the state would otherwise fund — and conclude the current settlement is enough. The asks set out in Parliament are strikingly modest and mostly cost little: reservist-style protection so volunteers aren’t financially penalised for turning out, an end to charging VAT on a rescue Land Rover, and a named Minister to answer to. England & Wales need not match Scotland pound-for-pound to do better than nothing — a predictable footing is overdue, and the road-tax exemption shows it can be done.
Until then, the teams depend on the rest of us — so the two most useful things any of us can do are to go prepared (every avoidable call-out is a Saturday a volunteer gets back) and to support them directly.
Support the teams
Every Lake District rescue team is an unpaid, donation-funded charity. They turn out, in all weather and at all hours, for nothing. If this report is useful to you, the best thanks is to support them — through LDSAMRA or your local team directly.
Donate via LDSAMRA JustGiving (opens in new tab) LDSAMRA donate page (opens in new tab)
Each team also takes donations directly via its own website (see teams[].website). LDSAMRA holds the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service; registered charity no. 1191015 (CIO).
Independence & funding: hikes.guide is wholly independent and not affiliated with LDSAMRA, MREW or any team; every team linked here is a registered charity, and we take nothing from any donation you make.
Donate to a team directly: Keswick (opens in new tab) · Wasdale (opens in new tab) · Langdale Ambleside (opens in new tab) · Patterdale (opens in new tab) · Duddon & Furness (opens in new tab) · Coniston (opens in new tab) · Cockermouth (opens in new tab) · Kendal (opens in new tab) · Penrith (opens in new tab) · Kirkby Stephen (opens in new tab) · Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs (LDMRSD) (opens in new tab) · Cumbria Ore Mines Rescue Unit (COMRU) (opens in new tab).
Methodology, sources & gaps
The one rule that governs every figure
Mountain-rescue figures are counted three different ways — 999 calls, full team deployments, and a team’s own incident log — and they do not add up to each other. That is why the Lake District 2024 total is a range (813–927), and why Keswick’s own 146 differs from its ~4% national share (~150). Both are correct on their own basis. We show ranges as ranges, surface the basis on every figure, and never sum across bases.
What we left out, on purpose
- Counting basis still matters. MREW counts call-outs and deployments (2025: 3,968 / 3,175). The Lake District 2025 total (900) is MREW's per-team incident tally; the 2024 Lakeland figure was reported as a 813-927 range on differing bases. Compare like with like and never sum across bases.
- Per-team 2025 counts are now published for every Lake District team (MREW Annual Review 2026), filling the gaps that previously left Coniston, Cockermouth, Kendal, Penrith and Kirkby Stephen without a figure.
- Remaining gaps: 2021 and 2022 national and Lake District totals; a Lake-District-specific fatality count for 2025 (only an England & Wales fatal-incident-protocol count of 71 is published for 2025; the 2024 LD figure of 32 is the latest regional number).
- Fatalities are small numbers and fluctuate year to year. The 2024 Lakeland figure (32, up from 14) is real but statistically noisy; present it with the long-run average (~21/yr) and the teams' caution against reading a trend into one year. Deaths have not risen in step with call-outs.
- Volunteer hours (167,411, over 3,093 deployments) are the 2024 figure, confirmed against the MREW Annual Review 2024; the 2026 review does not restate a 2025 hours total, so this stays clearly dated to 2024.
- Contributory factors (human error 939, inexperience 644, weather 518, etc.) are MREW's counts of factors recorded against 2025 incidents; a single incident can carry several. They describe what was present, not a single proven cause.
- Causation language (social media, navigation apps) is the publishing bodies' interpretation of the 2024 age-group shift, attributed to them, not asserted by us as established fact.
Corrections
Corrected 12 July 2026: an earlier version of this report and its promotion stated, in our own voice, that most incidents happen on the tired descent — a causal reading that no published ascent-vs-descent breakdown supports. The evidenced position is Ordnance Survey’s observation, visualising MREW’s data, that the busiest time of day is mid-afternoon as people descend from the hills — now quoted with attribution. We also softened “a record” on the national total to the year-on-year comparison (our series has gaps in 2021–22, so it cannot establish a record) and dated the 18–24 most-rescued finding to 2024. The 78% figure itself was always correct.
Sources
Every figure above traces to a published source. Full list:
- MREW Annual Review 2026 (2025 data) (opens in new tab) — Mountain Rescue England and Wales, 2026-05. England & Wales 2025: 3,968 call-outs / 3,175 deployments; 3 days without a call-out; primary reasons (slip/trip 22%, missing person 18%, injured person 82%); contributory factors; 10 busiest teams; busiest months (May/June/August 33%) and days (Sat/Sun 42%); full per-team Lake District counts (LD total 900); fatal-incident protocol invoked 71 times.
- 18- to 24-year-olds now biggest age group in need of rescuing (opens in new tab) — Ordnance Survey (visualising MREW 2024 data), 2025-04-17. E&W 2024 headline: 3,842 callouts; everyday-of-year; +24% 2019-2024; 78% after 12pm; 23% slip/trip; 17% missing person; 8% self-reported lost; busiest teams' shares; age-group shift 50-54 to 18-24.
- MREW Annual Review 2024 (opens in new tab) — Mountain Rescue England and Wales, 2025. Confirmed: 167,411 volunteer hours over 3,093 deployments in 2024; July and August the busiest months.
- Annual figures tell a mixed story across Mountain Rescue in England and Wales (opens in new tab) — Mountain Rescue England and Wales, 2021-01-01. E&W 2019 (2,973) and 2020 (3,080) totals; regional table incl. Lake District 2019 (659) and 2020 (568).
- 2024: A record year for Lake District mountain rescue? (opens in new tab) — Hefted - Dispatches from Cumbria (John Manning), quoting LDSAMRA/MREW spokespeople, 2024-07-30. E&W 2023 (3,462 calls / 2,775 deployments); LD per-team 2023 (Wasdale 163, Langdale Ambleside 116, Keswick 112, Patterdale 61, Duddon & Furness 83); LD 2018 (656), 2023 record 714; LD 2024 H1 causes (38% injury, 10% medical); fatalities context; ~25% LD share of E&W.
- Lake District Mountain Rescue receive record number of callouts for 2024 (opens in new tab) — ITV News Border, 2024-12-17. LD 2024 record (~780 by mid-December, up from 714 in 2023); 32 fatalities vs 14 in 2023.
- Lake District: Social media blamed for record number of rescues (opens in new tab) — Times and Star, 2024-12. LD 2024 range 813-927 depending on deployment vs 999-call basis; 32 vs 14 fatalities; ~20% up by end November.
- Record number of callouts for Keswick Mountain Rescue Team in 2024 (opens in new tab) — The Keswick Reminder, 2025-01-07. Keswick MRT 2024 = 146 callouts (record, beating 140 set in 2015), including three fatalities late in the year.
- Mountain bikers made up just 5.6% of all mountain rescue callouts last year (opens in new tab) — MBR (Mountain Bike Rider), 2025-04. Mountain bikers 5.6% of E&W 2024 callouts; 18-24 most-rescued demographic.
- Scafell Pike a mountain rescue incident hotspot - report (opens in new tab) — Whitehaven News / Times and Star, 2025. Scafell Pike ~60% of Wasdale callouts; leg/ankle injury predominance; Wasdale/Keswick/Langdale-Ambleside each ~4% of E&W in 2024; Scafell/Helvellyn area 21-50 incidents.
- Scottish Mountain Rescue Annual Statistics Review 2024 (opens in new tab) — Scottish Mountain Rescue, 2025-04. Scotland 2024 record ~1,000 callouts (incl. continuations); 25 civilian + 3 Police Scotland member teams. Comparison/context only.
- About / Member Teams (opens in new tab) — Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA), 2026. The 12 LDSAMRA member teams and their official websites; donation routes; Queen's Award for Voluntary Service; registered charity no. 1191015.
- Incidents & Annual Reports (opens in new tab) — LDSAMRA, 2026. Primary source for per-year LDSAMRA incident totals and per-team annual report PDFs — use to fill the 2021/2022 and per-team gaps.
- Government support for mountain rescue (CBP-10627) (opens in new tab) — House of Commons Library, 2026. Funding of mountain rescue: no direct, routine government funding in England & Wales (vs Scotland's £300,000/yr shared between 27 teams); MREW year-to-Dec-2024 income £1,248,439 / expenditure £1,344,372; one-off grants of £148,407 to 11 teams in 2020; the 2025 Autumn Budget VED exemption for SAR vehicles (est. ~£2,000/team/yr); the APPG for Volunteer Search and Rescue (June 2025); Westminster Hall debate 22 April 2026.
- Mountain rescue volunteers struggle as 'TikTok tourism' drives surge in callouts (opens in new tab) — Emergency Services Times, 2025-06-23. MREW CEO Mike Park: national workload up ~25% over five years; a two-fold rise in rescues of 18-25-year-olds linked to social-media virality; 'less well prepared' visitors; beauty spots going viral on TikTok/Instagram. An attributed interpretation, not a proven cause.
- The current demanding situation of mountain rescue teams across England & Wales (opens in new tab) — British Mountaineering Council, 2024. Teams 'dangerously close to breaking point'; handling more calls than the paid fire and rescue service yet receiving little to no government funding; seasonality and busiest-team context.
- Mountain Rescue (Westminster Hall debate, 22 April 2026) (opens in new tab) — Hansard / UK Parliament, 2026-04-22. Westminster Hall debate on government support for mountain rescue: teams as a de facto 'fourth emergency service'; the E&W/Scotland funding gap (Scotland directly funded since 2003); MREW coordinates 47 teams at £50,000-£100,000 each per year with no direct government funding; APPG asks — reservist-style status for volunteers, Crown indemnity insurance, VAT exemption on rescue vehicles, and a dedicated Minister for volunteer search and rescue.
Spot a data error? Request a correction — every figure here is sourced and dated, and genuine mistakes are fixed promptly.
Frequently asked questions
How many mountain rescue callouts are there in the Lake District?
In 2025 the Lake District’s teams attended 900 call-outs between them — the first year MREW has published a count for every Lakeland team. (2024 was reported as a range of 813–927 on differing counting bases, so the years aren’t strictly comparable; 2023 was 714 and 2020, 568.) The busiest team is Wasdale, covering Scafell Pike, with 154 call-outs in 2025.
Is hiking in the Lake District getting more dangerous?
Call-outs keep rising — 3,968 across England & Wales in 2025, up from 3,842 in 2024, and 900 in the Lakes — but that mostly reflects more people on the hills, not a more lethal landscape. Deaths are small, fluctuating numbers: the latest Lakeland figure is 32 (2024) against 14 in 2023, with a long-run average around 21 a year. The teams caution against reading a trend into a single year, and fatalities have not risen in step with call-outs. For the three fells that dominate the worry-searches we keep honest, sourced answers on the fell pages themselves: is Helvellyn dangerous? · is Scafell Pike dangerous? · is Blencathra dangerous?
Which is the busiest Lake District mountain rescue team?
Wasdale MRT — covering Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain, where roughly 60% of its call-outs happen — led the Lakes again in 2025 with 154 call-outs, about 5% of the England & Wales total. Langdale Ambleside (151) and Keswick (138) follow close behind, and all three — plus Patterdale — rank among the ten busiest teams in the country.
How are mountain rescue teams funded?
Entirely by donations. Every team is a registered charity crewed by unpaid volunteers who buy and maintain their own equipment; they receive no routine government funding for day-to-day rescue. LDSAMRA holds the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (charity no. 1191015). You can support them via LDSAMRA or any team’s own site — see “Support the teams” above.
Are callouts really rising, and why?
Yes — the rise is real and sustained (3,968 England & Wales call-outs in 2025, up from under 3,000 in 2019). Mountain Rescue and Ordnance Survey attribute it partly to more visitors, to ‘honeypot’ spots shared on social media, and to walkers relying on phone navigation apps not suited to the hills (the most-rescued age group shifted from 50–54 in 2019 to 18–24 by 2024). That is the bodies’ interpretation of a correlation — not proof that any one cause is to blame. Tellingly, the factor recorded most often against 2025 incidents was poor decision-making.
Cite or embed this report
Cite this report:
hikes.guide, “Lake District Mountain Rescue: The Data Report” (2025 data), https://hikes.guide/features/lake-district-mountain-rescue-report.html (accessed [date]).
Download the data: the full figure-by-figure dataset is a public CSV — download mountain-rescue-stats.csv (every row carries its year, basis, confidence and source).
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This report is reviewed and refreshed each spring, when Mountain Rescue England & Wales and the Lake District teams publish their figures for the previous year. A small number of figures are flagged for a primary-source check before each release. Spotted something that looks wrong? Please use the Report a Problem link in the footer — corrections are always welcome. Last updated 1 July 2026.