Right place

Oct. 4, 2008, 4:30 a.m.

Firefighters Chris Gould, Jeremy Myles and Alan Coldwell arrived at Mount Snowdon in Wales with their guide Dave Wainwright. The freezing rain was blowing sideways and the crew was running on empty after already having scaled Ben Nevis in Scotland and Scaffell Pike in England.

They were on the final leg of the Three Peaks Challenge, a 26-mile trek that attracts thousands during summer months to climb all three mountains in 24 hours. Many take the challenge for charity, as was the case with Gould, Myles and Coldwell. They chose to go off-season to avoid crowds and add an extra layer of difficulty to the already daunting task.

The men — all British Ministry of Defence workers at RAF Mildenhall — were exhausted by the time they reached Snowdon. But they sucked it up and pressed on, unaware of the life-saving rescue they would later perform on the mountain.

Wind gusts reached 80 mph shortly after they set out. The volatile weather and fatigue worked against them as they struggled for footing. Every step required extreme concentration.

The near "white-out" conditions prompted Wainwright, a nationally certified and medically trained mountaineering guide with Mildenhall Outdoor Recreation, to reroute the team around the Snowdown horseshoe ridge and up a restored Victorian railway track.

The summit was just 50 meters ahead when they saw what at first looked like a pile of trash next to the iron and wood trail. It was a man, and hypothermia and frostbite were setting into his already stiff and unconscious body.

"He was on his way out," said Wainwright, who immediately broke into the emergency gear he carries on treks and had shown the firefighters before they got started the day before.

There was no time or reason to panic. Moving with an instinctual and adrenaline-fueled determination, they stabilized the victim with extra clothes and within 15 minutes set up a shelter to help combat the elements.

While the firefighters attended to the man, who slipped in and out of consciousness, Wainwright called for help.

"It was like any training day. You just kind of get on with it. At the time, it’s very matter of fact," he said. "I’d rather him not been up there, but I’m happy all the training paid off. Sometimes it’s difficult to justify bringing all this equipment, but if we didn’t have it, we couldn’t have done what we did."

After the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team was alerted, the problem of getting the man off the mountain had to be solved. The icy squalls and general cloud cover near Snowdon’s 1,085-meter summit prevented an air rescue.

In a twist of fate — like the bad weather that pushed them off the beaten path — the summer train had been fired up that day to take a group of Welsh politicians up the mountain to tour a building under construction at the peak.

With the victim in tow, the hikers loaded up with the parliamentary delegation to get farther down the mountain where a Royal Air Force helicopter from RAF Valley could land.

They got the man, who has not been identified by Welsh authorities, safely back to civilization, saving his life and still accomplishing their challenge. Each man said the rescue was textbook but agreed that they never could have imagined ending their journey quite like that; on a path they were not expecting but were prepared for nonetheless.

"It was just so fortuitous," Wainwright said.

The firefighters agreed.

"I’m not a big believer in fate," Gould said. "But everything conspired for us to be there that day at that time."