UKH

I'm hoping people on here with Scottish mountain rescue links might advise me.....

Four of us topped out on Cioch Nose (Sgurr a'Chaorrachain) rather late on Monday last week. We had not been quick on the route, and had not fully appreciated the quite involved escape from the top of the route. We did not fancy traversing the Cioch Ridge (with another roped pitch) or descending the South Gully (with two abseils) in the dark, so we opted to bivouac at the Cioch summit. The weather was calm and we had the kit to bivouac reasonably comfortably.

Realising our headtorches could be seen from the road, and mountain rescue might be alerted, I decided to contact them to confirm we were all OK and did not need rescue. I phoned 999 (as I thought was correct) and reported our situation to the police asking the police operator (in Edinburgh) to pass the message to mountain rescue. The operator said I would be called back. Around two hours later, without further contact, I switched off my phone to save limited battery and went to sleep. 

On Tuesday morning we traversed the Cioch ridge, returned to our cars and on to the Torridon campsite by late morning. Phone reception is non-existent or poor throughout this journey so my phone remained off to save battery. At Torridon I picked up a message from the police to phone 101 which I did, without success. For an Englishman, contacting Police Scotland on 101 is tricky, particularly when mobile reception is poor. I was faced with "we are experiencing a high volume of calls etc...." and then a muffled automated message in a broad Scottish accent asking me to select options, none of which I could make out. Choosing one option at random I got another "long delay..." message with no indication where I was in the queue. I tried three times, and gave up three times. I also successfully phoned my wife in Ipswich to confirm we were all OK and back at the campsite.

On Wednesday morning, we set out again intending to wild camp in Coire Mhic Fhearchair. On Thursday we climbed Eastern Buttress. There was no mobile reception after leaving Torridon till topping out on Beinn Eighe on Thursday afternoon when I got a totally distraught message from my wife saying that she had been visited by the Suffolk police late on Wednesday morning to tell her I was missing. Suffolk police had been given no information from Police Scotland about the incident (eg when it was reported, and that it was to say we did not need rescue) so she could not know that my call to her on Tuesday midday was proof that I was not missing. She assumed that something else had occurred after that time. She had had no sleep and was on the point of travelling to Scotland.

So what, if anything, did I/we do wrong (apart, of course, for being too slow on the Cioch Nose). Was I wrong to try to alert mountain rescue? Is there a way to do that for non-emergencies that doesn't involve dialing 999? - I'm sure anyone involved with mountain rescue in the Torridon area would have recognised our position and known we were in no danger. Should I have persevered with the call to 101 - I didn't think I would ever get through before running out of battery or reception. Should I learn to understand broad Glaswegian before venturing north of the border?? Or does the fault lie with Police Scotland with whom I am strongly inclined to raise a complaint?

Thoughts very welcome.

Many thanks indeed, Martin

I think you behaved very responsibly.

The only thing I could point to is that you phoned 999, which is strictly for emergencies. I'm sure you properly explained the situation to the police operator, but it seems likely that they failed to understand that bivying at the top of a climb in Torridon isn't that big a deal, and your call having come in via 999 did the rest.

I understand your point about getting any response when phoning 101, and there doesn't seem to be a way to phone the MRT direct. I think I'd probably have tried to email TMRT or, if that wasn't possible from the bivi site, texted someone to ask them to send an email. But it's easy to say that with hindsight.

Thanks Andy - that's reassuring.

Martin

How did you expect them to respond when you'd been in touch via the emergency operator to say "We're in a situation where people might think we're in danger, but don't worry, we're ok." and then when they subsequently tried to get in touch with you to verify that you're still ok they still hadn't had a response days later?

You called 999 when there was no emergency.  When you subsequently received a message from the police asking you to get in touch you made a bit of a half-hearted effort to do so and then gave up because it wasn't particularly convenient.

Yes.  Having previously called 999, you absolutely should have responded to a request for you to get in touch to verify that you're ok, and persevered even if you found that process a bit glitchy.

Do you not have a car charger?  Why was running out of battery still a concern when you were in the car?  If you didn't have a signal in a particular place, why couldn't you have driven somewhere you could get a signal?  You know landlines are still a thing right?  You couldn't have stopped at a pub, or a campsite?

An apology would be more appropriate.

I wouldn't of bothered. I dont think anyone would do anything unless you were clearly signaling to the road. Nice spot for a bivi in calm weather. Came across a white tailed sea eagle there. Dont knimow who got the biggest fright. I could feel the waft coming from his wings as he took off over my head.

I think if you dial 999 you have an obligation to make yourself available for their follow up.  To dial 999 and report yourself bivying on the top of a mountain and then be unavailable thereafter for follow-up (even if you did try hard multiple times to reach out to them yourself) ... I think is probably, on balance, in the wrong.  

The Police/MRT team have little else to go except the fact you were once benighted on the top of a mountain , called 999 for whatever reason, and are now uncontactable.  

I think it is reasonable that they assumed you had come to some form of harm given their inability to raise you to ascertain anything to the contrary.

IMO, probably best not to call 999 if not in need of assistance.  I don't think its an "FYI" type of thing ...

Glad you're safe.

Just to be clear: thats not a criticism of Torridon MRT (or any other team). I'm sure they don't have the resources to staff a public contact number.

Unnecessarily angry.

And who would be to blame had he not called and there'd subsequently been a MR response? Or do we need to just accept spending hours on hold to the police every time we're late off a route as a fact of modern life?

I'll just add:

- Police Scotland 101 is absolutely hopeless a lot of the time, on-hold times of 30+ minutes to get through. That is the structural problem here: it's basically impossible to speak to the police in a non-emergency situation.

- With hindsight, contacting the relevant rescue team by email (instead of police 999) would have probably been a useful thing to do. While they will say that shouldn't be used for time-sensitive things, on our team at least, 10+ people would have seen your email and would have had that information if concern was later raised by somebody seeing lights.

- If a member of the public had raised concerns about lights, there's probably a good chance somebody would have turned out anyway to check things out, even if you had forewarned that you were up there.

It is worth noting that you can register for 999 SMS service.  Note that you must registered in advance.

https://www.mountaineering.scot/safety-and-skills/essential-skills/mountain...

I don't think anyone would have been unduly alarmed to see torches on the summit of the Cioch at nightfall at this time of year - if you weren't flashing the 6-times-a-minute distress signal. So I don't believe there was any need to contact mountain rescue.

With 999 being for emergencies and 101 being unresponsive, maybe call a relative and let them know the situation. They could have sent an email to MRT etc. Obviously, I'm sitting in a comfortable office, not on top of a mountain - so only a suggestion for alternative course of action in future. 

I have to agree with those saying that calling 999 was the mistake - it simply wasn't an emergency situation. Your intentions in doing this were clearly good, but it was still a mistake; doing nothing, or just calling/texting your wife would have been better.

Additionally, Police Scotland are under a lot of fire just now for failing to follow up on a 999 call some years ago, possibly resulting in an avoidable death - so they're very unlikely to just leave something alone just because it's probably OK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-58474385

One would hope not. I bivi on summits regularly and have never felt that I ought to tell the police or mountain rescue. 

Really?  Or just not what you want to hear? 
I might say the same about: "Or does the fault lie with Police Scotland with whom I am strongly inclined to raise a complaint?"

You said "Thoughts very welcome."  Those were my thoughts.

Nobody really.  MRTs (and the RNLI) regularly respond to calls from people who mistakenly report that they have seen people in danger and generally regard discovering that it was a false alarm as a good result.

Every time, or just when you were benighted on the route and called 999?  Under those circumstances, yes, of course we should - by hook or by crook - find a way to get in touch and let them know we're ok.  If you only have battery and/or signal enough to text somebody, text a friend and ask them to negotiate their way through the voicemail maze on your behalf. 

The '101' system has made that more difficult than it used to be when you could look up the number and call a specific police control room unfortunately, but having called previously called 999 the obligation to respond to a follow-up call seeking to resolve the situation is clear.

In general, if it's not an emergency then you're better off using 101 than 999.  I'd say you did the right thing in letting the police know; depending on what reports they received it could very well prevent an unnecessary callout.  I've done similar once for friends who were caught out in the Fisherfields and decided to doss for the night and continue in the light (plenty of kit and food to last them) but were worried that someone would report them overdue.  They left a txt message on my phone, I called 101 and logged it with them.  Same process as yourself, the next day I got a call from Police Scotland as they needed to close out the incident by confirming that the people were off the hill.  They weren't at that point, so I called back after they were and closed it all out.

That said you really should have persevered with the wait/hold when you picked up the message  - it doesn't matter which option you pick, you'll get an operator ultimately.  Until you've done that the incident (to them) is still open and needs to be resolved by confirming you got off the hill safely - that's their due diligence.  Recent incident where police didn't follow up on reports of a vehicle that had left the road resulted in at least 1 person dying, so they will 100% follow up on any reports/incidents to ensure resolved an no-one in danger rather than assume everything is OK.

I don't think that you've cause for complaint against Police Scotland as it was within your capacity to call them back when requested and you elected not to and put yourself beyond contact by switching off your phone despite having signal in various places around there.  You've also got options of using landlines at the youth hostel, Beinn Damph hotel, Torridon village shop/cafe and possibly the visitor center - all within minutes of the campsite too so no reason not to call them back.  Not unreasonable at all for Police to then contact your wife after a couple of days to see if she'd heard from you in the circumstances.

It sounds like you're being a bit defensive claiming you couldn't understand the accents on 101 and so gave up trying - they're really mild "posh" accents used for this very reason and despite being hard of hearing (wear hearing aids) I've never struggled on the few occasions I've called.  Possibly poor connections made them difficult to hear, but I doubt anything to do with incomprehensible accents in honesty.

It does sound odd that they Suffolk police didn't' know when you'd "gone missing" (unless it's just been badly communicated with your wife and they meant they didn't know when after the call you might have gone missing) - that certainly would have helped her!  Details do get lost in handovers between forces, control rooms and even individual officers so hard to say if PS didn't give any details or if they were lost along the way; poor in any case!

Cheers,

Stu

I think you're confusing me with the OP. I didn't write any of the words you quoted

I can see both sides of this. From your perspective, there isn't a clear route to contact MRT to give them FYIs like this. The information available does indeed tell you to call 999, ask for the Police and tell them you need MRT. I would be interested to see if there are any MRT volunteers on here who might be able to tell you if there is a better route for communicating this information to them (edited to add that several people have addressed this in the time I took to write this).

From the perspective of the police, I can see that you called an emergency number to report yourself bivvying on top of a mountain and then failed to follow up. I don't see what else they could have done, except to try to locate you - with no other indication of your well-being, not to do so would have been a dereliction of their duties.

I think in your position, I would have persisted with the effort to return the call to 101, frustrating though that is. If calling was too frustrating, I would have considered finding the nearest police station and explaining the situation to whoever was on the desk. I probably would have prioritised this over the trip to Coire Mhic Fhearchair if I had to.

As an aside, several years ago I was bivvying in the Torridon area in over the New Year. The police found my car while on routine patrol, got the owner details from DVLA and attempted to contact to check I was ok. Unfortunately, it was a company car, so I wasn't the registered owner and they ended up calling the out of hours number at work. I worked in clinical trials at the time, so that number went to a clinician who was on call to deal with adverse effects in any of our trials - he had no idea who I was or what to do with the information. Of course, I had no idea anyone was trying to get hold of me. I felt really bad - a lot of wasted effort and stess for a lot of people for no reason. In any case, you definitely aren't the only person who has got into this kind of situation!

Oops - yes I was.  Sorry.

I don't know MRT thinking on this but they may feel that even if they get the message that you are fine and then they get a call saying that they have seen someone who needs rescuing they might feel compelled to go anyway as there is no gauruntee that it isn't someone else in trouble.

It would be a good idea if there were a number one could text to leave a message saying you don't need rescuing which MR could check if they receive a worried call.

I had an incident in this area a few years ago. We kayaked across Loch Maree to go climbing at Carnmore and when we returned 3 days later there was a note on the car asking me to phone PC Plod in Gairloch. A man dossing in his van in the layby had seen us depart and had found a bit of metal on the beach which he thought might be an important bit of a kayak (!), and when we did not return next day decided we had sunk and called the police. The police had visited my home and searched the loch by boat. All a bit embarrassing, but I didn't feel we had done anything wrong. PC Plod was friendly about it all on the phone.

In the sailing / kayaking /open water swimming world, we use Safetrx.  To record our journey and note when we are safely back. (because trying to contact the coastguard to  report you might be doing something iffy is just as hard as logging things with MRT they just don't have the resources or the process)

https://www.rya.org.uk/knowledge/safety/keep-in-touch/safetrx

Perhaps there is a place for a BMC /UKC  version allowing people to live log their mountain journeys if they want that sort of reassurance. 

(there are both high and low battery pow modes with more or less frequent logging before someone complains about battery life! )

That's okay.

Fwiw I thought you made useful points but your tone was unnecessarily aggressive. The OP is clearly aware that there were problems with what he did and didn't do, but there were ambiguities and he was asking for people's thoughts and judgement processes. I don't think a generalised pile-on was appropriate.

I'd have just messaged my wife to say where I was and the plan.  999 is really wrong use of the number but a thoughtful idea.

Cheers

Toby

Thank you to everyone for your replies.

Many replies are supportive, but by a small majority the consensus view seems to be that:

I shouldn't have phoned 999 in the first place. I should have done nothing, or emailed the Torridon MRT direct.

I should have persevered with contacting 101 (despite one poster acknowledging that it can take 30+ minutes to get through).

I didn't know you could email the MRT direct - I'll make sure I have the email address another time. Though I'm not sure I had sufficient reception to use email at the Cioch. I still don't think it's a sensible decision to do nothing to avoid an unnecessary MRT call-out if our lights could clearly be seen from the road, as was the case here.

And the Police Scotland 101 service seems clearly to be in need of improvement.

Thanks again

Martin

Actually, I did phone my wife from the Cioch straight after phoning 999. She's not a climber though, and would not fully understand our situation (and the non-seriousness of it). I'm not sure how telling her we were OK would avert an unnecessary MRT call-out though, unless she had then emailed the MRT. 

The problem was not that she didn't know we were OK on Monday night. It was that the way Suffolk Police presented the info to her she assumed we had "gone missing" after my call on Tuesday lunchtime - nothing to do with our Cioch benightment.

Martin

Thanks Stu - that's helpful.

Martin

Thanks Robert. One plus to our subsequent outing to Coire Mhic Fhearchair is that we got to see the rather nice photo of you climbing on the Far East Wall (or is it the Eastern Ramparts?) in my friend's SMC Selected Climbs guide.

Martin

MRT really shouldn't use that information though. The problem is that if after your call they saw someone apparently flashing a distress signal from the top of the Cioch Nose, then they shouldn't ignore that. As has been mentioned upthread, there could be a second team in genuine distress, about whom you had no idea.

For this reason I don't think it makes sense to contact MRT just to tell them you will be on a hill after dark. Plenty of people are. I think you should only contact MRT if someone might misinterpret your car being out overnight - e.g. if it is not at a usual entry point to the hills, or you had left a note saying you'll be back to it by a certain time.

Yes, you thought I was 'angry'.  I'm not angry.  I was quite blunt though, it would certainly be fair to say.  The OP said he was "strongly inclined to raise a complaint" with the Police, which did made me less inclined to sugar-coat my opinion than I otherwise might have been.

You're clearly much more tactful than I am, but that did not strike me as someone who appreciates that he'd made a seriously daft, albeit well intentioned, mistake.  It is never appropriate to dial 999 when there is no emergency.  Having done so it was really quite irresponsible to fail to get in touch after being requested to do so, even if it was a bit of a ballache.

101 is indeed a bit crap, and not just in Scotland.  It hardly seems fair to blame the police for that.

(Tom-in-Edinburgh will probably be along in a minute to explain why the English are particularly culpable for the regrettable state of the resources available to the Scottish police.  As always there will be a small nugget of truth somewhere, lost in the midst of his McGlashan rantings.)

Not sure how this would help; if someone saw lights on the mountain they're not going to know who their wife is!

Did you tell her when you spoke to her that you had called 999?  When you spoke to her again on Tuesday, did you mention that you had had a message from the police asking you to get in touch but had been unable to do so?

It's a bit rubbish that the Suffolk police were not better informed of the sequence of events, that you had called 999 on the Monday night and that they'd become worried about you after failing to contact you on the Tuesday.  But then again had she known that you'd called the police on the Monday night, that too might have saved her a lot of worry.  At least she might have been well informed enough to ask if you'd "gone missing" before or after the Tuesday lunchtime.

Sorry, but "seriously daft" is too strong. I've been climbing 50+ years, I hugely appreciate the efforts of the MRTs, and consider it very appropriate to try to head-off an unnecessary call-out (having been the subject of two unnecessary MRT call-outs in earlier years before the advent of mobile phones). The decision to contact the MRT was made by all 4 of us after discussion. My "mistake" at the time was not to realise that you could contact MRT by other means (if we had had email reception, which is doubtful).

I'm not sure who else to blame for the "crapness" of the 101 service other than the police who administer it?

Many thanks to everyone who has responded constructively, yourself included, but accusing me of being "seriously daft" is not, I feel, required on this occasion.

Martin

It wouldn't have helped at all with lights on the mountain, but might have saved her a lot of worry when the police turned up on her doorstep.

Please see further up. My wife was fully aware we had returned safely from the Cioch. I phoned her from there and when we returned to Torridon. When the police turned up at her door she assumed something else had happened subsequently as the local policeman did not know what the report referred to or the time it was made. By the time the police visited my wife, we were out of contact in Coire Mhic Fhearchair. There was certainly some miscommunication between the two police forces.

Martin

Next time don't bloody ring anyone is my advice!

I doubt safetrax or equivalent mobile based system at present would be any use in the Highlands as you generally only get signal on the very tops. Yes in this case it would have worked but overall, if you want tracking you have to go for a satillite tracker. Also the coastguard don’t do anything if you are overdue on safetrax, they await your shore contact to call you in and then use safetrax to as a source of information. I suppose a hill version would have let the police see you move off in the morning, if they checked, something else to log in the system and get handed over at shift change. But there is a general tenant that when it’s important a voice call is critical.  Hence the plod wanting to hear from you.

As a sea kayaker who spends a lot of time paddling below cliffs in Scotland, I also know that safetrax often doesn’t work. I can see it could work well on the south coast.

long term sat trackers will come down in price and satellite mobile phone may become viable. But at present a safetrax system on the hill is going to be a mess, and I don’t think you can be so quick to discount the phone charge issue either.

For the OP I would have let my responsible person contact know and then for a visually prominent and odd location like the Choich, would have tried not to use my head torch especially in the direction of the road, then once set up not have used it again. I wouldn’t have phoned the plod, unless my home contact would have already called me overdue, but can see why you did neither approach is wrong (though like above I wouldn’t have gone 999), but I would have had concerns of the police messing up or escalating at their discretion, once you have called them particularly on 999 they have a duty of care.
 

 Just as if as a sea kayaker you called the coastguard to say it would be long after dark before you got back to the cars as you had a slow / tired group/member but you were ok, the coastguard might look at the location, weather, tides and day light and decide they would rather have some eyes on you via other water users or even the lifeboat if they could, rather than be facing trying to get you assistance later, thank you very much. Once you call police or coastguard you have to accept they will follow protocols or decide to do what they feel is most appropriate.

Glad all ended OK.

One future thing to consider is always carry a portable phone charger? Preferably a good one - my Anker does 8 full recharges. 

Yes, they weigh extra. But if you are planning on being in remote areas for a while they may prove a lifeline in terms of leaving the phone on. Tiny signals can get picked up in random spots. 

Just a thought

That would be a discussion for the politics forum.  Like other emergency services, and public services in general, the police can only do what they can do with the resources they are given.

The attempt to avert a potential false alarm was wholly laudible, no criticism from me whatsoever on that point. 

The messaging from all of the emergency services is absolutely crystal clear though, and as far as I know has remained so consistently throughout all 50+ years of your climbing career: it is never appropriate to call 999 except in an emergency.

You did though and as it happens that would have been fine, if it hadn't subsequently turned out to be too much trouble for you to get in touch with them again after they asked you to.

I was accused above of being angry and aggressive, but I'm really not trying to be so I'm sorry if that's how I'm coming across.  There's a subtle distinction here, but I think an important one.  I am not accusing you of being daft, seriously or otherwise.  It's the mistake you made, and subsequently compounded with another one, that was daft.

No one would be 'to blame'. It would have been recorded as 'well intentioned false alarm' or similar.

Whilst I understand the OPs motivation to prevent an unnecessary call out, 999 isn't the way to do it. He set in motion a process that requires confirmation that the caller and party are safe.

If you're late off a route and concerned about someone seeing your lights and calling the MRT, then text your wife, mate, boss, pub landlord or whoever and ask them to try and get in touch via Facebook, email or whatever means they can. They can do that from home with a brew and biccies whilst watching telly.

Just do not, in any circumstances, call 999 unless you need an emergency response.

Edit: Just re-read the OP:

Seriously??

So... you've had two MRT call outs this year and now another confused incident.  Are you Mr Bean?

Meant to be a joke, in case it missed the mark.

Sadly we live in such a risk averse society you do become paranoid doing any sport with an element of danger in case some well meaning individual has suggested you need rescuing while you go about your hobby.  I'm sure there have been some cliff /sea cliff, sea rescues called out for poor souls just having a nice day out too.

Things come in threes, you should be good now!

Toby

I worded my reply poorly. 999 isn't the number to call, I fully agree.

The poor communication between police forces is disappointing. "I'm very sorry, your husband is missing in Scotland but I can't tell you how we know this or when it was reported" isn't very reassuring, and had the details been readily available I imagine much worry would have been avoided.

Just in case anyone reads your post who hasn't read the whole thread. It's two unnecessary call-outs in 50+ years not "this year"!

The first was in the 70's. A young group doing a snow-holing practice overnight just up the hill from Kirkstone Pass. We should probably have let the police/MRT know we were doing it and would be showing lights, but we didn't. The second was also in winter on Craig Meagaidh in the 90's. Two of us were benighted and our lights were seen. Lochaber MRT turned out in force, accompanied by Channel 4 TV. A moment of uninvited fame ensued. I still have a video of the programme. Both incidents led me to assume it was best to alert Mountain Rescue, if you can, if you are showing lights but don't need rescue. Not everyone on here agrees though. Our mistake, clearly, was to use 999 to do so. I wasn't aware of an alternative way of contacting the MRT - perhaps I should have been.  

Martin

Exactly that. thank you.

Martin

I'd challenge the idea of trying to contact MR directly by other means here.  Depending on the individual team setup they may, or may not, see the message coming in via e-mail, SM etc and so a good chance the police won't be aware of it.  Depending on where  you are you may not even contact the right team (not always intuitive which team covers which area).

Police Scotland make the decision on whether an MRT response is needed / warranted rather than individual teams (though they may be consulted depending on the local setup) so if you don't make Police Scotland aware then you can only assume they won't know and it won't form part of their decision making.  That's why advice is always to call Police Scotland if you need to contact Mountain Rescue.

As folk have noted above the MRTs also have no capacity to link  your message to your torches so saying you're fine won't necessarily prevent them coming out as who know how many other parties could be out on any given hill.

Lesson here isn't to try and contact MR directly next time, it's to call the police back so that they can confirm you're down and safe.  That was the big mistake in this scenario.

Cheers!

Stu

Hindsight is wonderful isn’t it

Well intentioned unnecessary call outs can be a problem, maybe made worse by joe public watching too much reality TV. This can apply to us sea kayakers when practicing rescues etc. If I’m going to be doing this I sometimes call the coastguard to file a “short passage plan” and phone in again when off the water. The coast guard are very receptive and good humoured to this. This option doesn’t exist for climbing but I don’t think MR would respond to head torches high up in good weather unless an obvious distress SOS or 6 long flashes. Dialling 999 is like radioing mayday leading to unstoppable protocols. 

It's the same as everywhere else.  They centralised their control room and other functions because Tory cuts from Westminster eventually result in proportional cuts in Scottish government spending and it was a way of saving money without cutting the front line.

The issue I see here is reporting something to the cops and then when they follow up and ask you to call back not putting in enough effort to call them back, even if it was a major hassle and would waste a half day of the holiday. 

Wouldn't have occurred to me to contact mountain rescue to say I was OK, unless of course they'd contacted me asking just that. Just think, if you'd left the phone in the car there wouldn't have been any headaches...

Oops.  It seems I owe you an apology for another embarrassing mistake in this thread.  You confounded my expectations with a wholly accurate and McGlashan-free summary of the situation there I think.

Mrs Profitofdoom was home alone once and dialled 999 and asked for police - said there was a burglar breaking in next door

Just minutes later 4 police officers came hurtling round the corner on foot (they must've parked out of sight) with a police dog

3 doors down a guy was at the top of a ladder painting window frames. He was wearing white overalls, holding a paint brush, and had a paint pot

The police had him down double quick and all was settled

The police were really nice to Mrs Profitofdoom and said "You did the right thing, when you have any doubt about anything, call us"

When I came home later I apologised to the painter. He said OK never mind, but didn't look that thrilled

Marks off for spelling.

Thank you everyone for some thoughtful responses and some probably deserved criticism of my actions.

I've learnt a few things and I have some suggestions.

I had assumed, partly based on my prior experiences mentioned above, that MRTs would appreciate being notified in cases such as this to avoid unnecessary call-outs. Several posters noted, though, that even if so notified most MRTs would not automatically ignore a call that lights were observed on the hill at that location - it could well be a different party in difficulties close-by.

It might be helpful if the MRTs collectively could advise, perhaps through BMC/SMC, whether they do welcome being alerted when parties are safe but benighted. Otherwise, I think I'll assume in future that they do not, and it was a mistake to try to make contact.

I had understood that the only way to contact mountain rescue quickly was through the police via 999, even if not an emergency. However, several posters indicated that email may be an alternative If so, even if it was appropriate to contact mountain rescue in this case, I was wrong to use 999. 

Calling 999, at least in Scotland, initiates a fixed emergency protocol, even if the conversation with the 999 operator clearly indicates there is no emergency. I confirmed in the conversation that we were already safe - no follow up to check we were still safe was really required. But the protocol required a case to be opened which was not closed without further confirmation from myself. 

The consensus is that I should have tried harder to respond to the police's request to confirm we were safe via 101. Only I know how hard I tried, of course. It was exceedingly frustrating, but it's true I didn't spend half a day doing nothing else, as Tom in E suggested I should have.

I would suggest two, relatively inexpensive, things that might improve matters. First, the 101 answering service could count down your position in the queue to give you an idea of the wait, as many other similar answering services do. And second, the number from which I was texted by the police could accept a text message back, rather than stating "no incoming messages are accepted". These changes would be particularly welcome given the poor mobile phone coverage across much of the Highlands.

I don't think Police Scotland are entirely without fault in this - for example it seems that incomplete information was relayed to Suffolk Police. But based on the posts on this thread, I'm no longer minded to make a complaint.

Thanks again everyone - much appreciated.

Martin

lovely - I've given it a like but it deserves more.

Unfortunately I think peoples expectations over what is acceptable from the emergency services is a bit warped. You suggest it's unacceptable to wait 30 minutes to have a call answered by the police via 101, but you're ringing to say 'I'm literally fine'. Which is pretty good example of a non-urgent call and a 30 minute wait doesn't seem inappropriate given the context. (101 might be a total clusterf*ck, i've never had to use the service but I don't think this is a good example of the system failing) 

I say that only out of frustration seeing people call 999 because they can't be bothered to wait for 111. I get that it's an inconvenience to wait but all systems have resource limitations and so there are processes designed to triage and use the limited resources available to the best possible use. I would probably assume that rural areas of Scotland have fairly sparse and stretched police forces and creating additional incidents just ties up people.

I don't think you do really need to follow up as it was an honest mistake but I think you're far closer to the side of 'sending a tin of biscuits and sorry card' than 'lodging a formal complaint' which lets be fair, is only wasting even further police resources! 

edit: Sorry, clicked started writing my reply before your last post (then got side tracked by bakeoff). Yeah it's a shame there are inefficiencies in the clunky algorithms. I can totally see how in an ideal world you could have rang the control room for the local police that night and spoken to a human who would have said "Aye pal, i'll leave a post-it note on the desk to remind me overnight" but sadly all the systems are automated and you just go down as call 1238 of today's date and then rest is computer driven protocol. 

I think there is a consensus that there was no need to call the police or contact MR. I would be extremely surprised if reports of seeing head torches on a calm night without an obvious distress signal would have resulted in a call out. If you were concerned then just switch the lamps off once settled in your bivouac, or at least take care to minimise beam spread

Respect for posting about an interesting incident through a genuine desire to learn, and then being open to constructive criticism. I'm sure that many other hillgoers as experienced as yourself would have just kept quiet about it or been much more defensive. Threads like this help prevent similar incidents in the future. We all benefit from this sort of culture.

Martin,

My end of a long thread thoughts:

-I’m a team member, but not leadership member, of a highland MRT. 

-As I understand 999 is the most appropriate way to contact MRT. Email not reliable for time sensitive issues.

-Reiterating points already made

1.  I think it’s subjective whether you feel you should contact police/MRT to confirm you’re NOT in trouble. there’s not a right/wrong answer  

2. mobiles can be a 2 edged sword with battery life, reception etc. Carrying a tiny back up battery pack very worthwhile (I’ve got one size of a matchbox)

3. With greatest respect to all police involved it is unrealistic to expect flawless communication. Much better to accept full responsibility for clarifying the situation.

4. In that regard probably THE take home message is Closing the loop ie. finding any way to speak to a real person (best of all the Police eg. Local police station in gairloch?) the next day is the key!!  

Hi Martin, thanks for your post, it's raised a lot of interesting answers and links for further help. One could read the whole thread and establish a useful how-to guide for similar situations.

Lots of lessons learned from this incident and chance for all of us going into the hills to polish up our procedures and to better understand the mechanisms that underpin the emergency support that helps all of us.

UKC again proves its worth.

Just registering my support for the OP's general approach. 

This idea that multiple posters have mentioned that it's easy to distinguish between general torchery and m'aidez signals is very shaky.

How many if the general population that have been drawn into the countryside this year would actually know the correct distress signal?  Not many.

But, as for complaining to the fuzz, naw.

For what it's worth, we often see people getting cut off by the tide on our tidal islets. This would result in them being stuck for between 2 to 6 hours, and invariably they'd be none the worse for their mistake, however, policy is to rescue them before they have a chance to succumb to something worse, like a heart attack, serious fall or hypothermia.  There's also the risk of them trying to swim across a channel with a strong cross current and getting washed away - if they're stupid enough to get cut off they're stupid enough to try a crazy swim.  Fishermen deliberately get cut off on the same islets all the time, so reports of them get a trip to the nearest headland by a police car with binoculars to see if they're actually in trouble or not. If they're not in trouble they get left alone. Obviously it's a bit difficult to do that with someone on a mountaintop.

I think you'd perhaps have been best off not calling MRT but I can see what you were trying to achieve and it doesn't seem unreasonable. Making more of an effort to let them know when you were safely down having told them you were up there for the night might have been the best course of action.

Mrs. Swede and I once climbed the face of Ben Lui in winter, it was a lovely sunny day so we left bags near the summit (stashed neatly with gloves out in the sun to dry) while we walked to the other munro summit behind it and then back to the Ben Lui summit.  We collected our bags and descended down the left ridge (looking out) and didn't think anything else of it.  The next day we found out that MRT had spent half the night looking for us after someone had reported bags on the summit and assumed their owners had tumbled down the face.  Luckily the campsite owner knew what we'd done as we'd been chatting to him after we got back so he was able to inform MRT what had happened when they called the next day to see if anyone staying with him hadn't returned.  

Sometimes not making a call doesn't end up well either - not that I had even considered it in this case.

But thankfully it's also a bit difficult to get cut off by the sea on a mountaintop...

I think the general feeling is that while there's a chance that torches could be seen and a call-out made by a passer by, this is much less likely than the chance of an incident being registered through calling 999, regardless of intention.

Inreresting point of view to read from someone within the MR service. I've never seen official guidance anywhere that says you can dial 999 for a non-emergency. My understanding was that "subjective" use of 999 was a real problem for the emergency services and to be discouraged.

I would also have assumed that if it was a valid course of action to contact mountain rescue to let them know you're OK to avoid an unnecessary callout, there would be a non-emergency number for this purpose, like there is with the coastguard.

It does seem like we could do with a best practice here rather than a subjective decision that could clog up emergency response. Perhaps this is something that the BMC could clarify?

Another problem at least in England is that calling 101 to update police is an absolute nightmare if you have since travelled outside the original region you reported the incident in, as your call can't be transferred to the neighbouring county and they don't have access you your previous call log.  (Total pita of you are on the border of two counties)

Once you've contacted 999, you are supposed to remain in place until further contact is made?

Perhaps James will post again to clarify, but I'm assuming that what me means by "time sensitive issues" is that there is an emergency.  Or perhaps that a call out is already underway.

Hypothetical situation:
Lets say you're on the hill at night and see the MRT arriving and getting a search underway from the road below.  It would seem appropriate under those circumstances to ring 999 in order to report your position.  Somebody else has (presumably) already made the emergency call in that situation, and what you're doing is getting in touch to pass on information you have that might be relevant.

Whether the call out is a false alarm or not, it's useful and time-sensitive information for the MRT to know that you are up there, what your situation is and where you are.  (And if they were able to establish that you are indeed the party they were called out to look for and that you're fine, they might then stand down and go back home to bed.)

That would be the police, but it's a shame 101 isn't more useful than it apparently is.  With the Coastguard there is the advantage that you can still ring the control room in a specific geographical area directly and probably get to speak to someone who knows what is going on very quickly.

As the volunteer organisation likely to turn up and rescue you, it's the RNLI who are analogous to Mountain Rescue in this situation, not the Coastguard.  And as with Mountain Rescue you can't contact them directly in the first instance to pass on any 'time sensitive' information.  (But they might well be getting in touch directly if you have a working phone, or a VHF radio, once the rescue effort is underway.)

It was an mrt callout. We stayed in place until they called us back and then followed their instructions.

However the police who I initially contacted via 999 to request the mrt assistance asked me to call 101 once we were back home, so that they could close the incident - unfortunately first place we got a phone signal after reaching the car was in s.yorks, but it initial call was in Derbyshire.

FWIW, I just had a quick google to see if there are still geographical numbers available for the Police.  Couldn't find one for S Yorks, but did quite easily for Derbyshire:

https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/contact/af/contact-us/
(Scroll down to where it says "Please use this number if you're contacting us from outside of the UK." and there's a landline number with a Ripley area code.)

Likewise Police Scotland:
https://www.scotland.police.uk/contact-us/
"Contact Us
Always dial 999 in an emergency
By phone – 101 for non-emergencies (+44 (0) 1786 289070 from outside Scotland)."

Cheers. But the fact is I was told to call 101 by the 999 handler.

Edit - it was also 7+ years ago and I was tired and emotional. Still in the days of Nokia dumbphones and turning on the desktop pc to look for a direct phone number late on a Sunday evening wasnt the first thing that came to mind.

No criticism implied, I was just curious to see if there were still geographical numbers out there to be found.  It seems some forces publish the number for people to use when calling from outside the UK (where 101 doesn't work, obvs), and others don't.  Wherever you're calling from I'm pretty sure the geographical number would just drop you into the same call-handling system that 101 does, so it wouldn't be any kind of a shortcut to jump the queue and get through to a human quicker.