The 1991 'Esk Butress helicopter crash in which no-one died

For mountain rescue teams, jeopardy comes as standard. But, on a cool Saturday in April 1991, a group in the western Lake District faced a confluence of events that seemed guaranteed to be fatal when the blades of their rescue helicopter hit the side of a remote crag and splintered through the windshield. Hanging from a winch under that RAF helicopter, being dragged through the air, mountain rescuer Judith Cantrell did not know what had happened but was keen to let the crew know she was alive. "I remember thinking I'm okay, but I don't want them to think I'm a body, I'm not dead," she says. Cantrell worked at the outward bound centre in Eskdale, Cumbria, and was on what she describes as a rare day off when the call came through. A climber had fallen on Esk Buttress and was lying injured on a ledge. A Sea King helicopter was on its way from RAF Boulmer in Northumberland to pick up her and a colleague to help him. "We would have just gone in what we were wearing," she remembers. "It felt quite urgent because the casualty was potentially unconscious." Cantrell says, although Esk Buttress is popular with climbers, it is a "serious crag" and a remote one, so she knew the call-out was go