Last updated 19:28, Thursday, 27 November 2008

MIKE PARK, from Pardshaw, was just one of hundreds of runners in the Original Mountain Marathon caught in freak weather conditions recently on the Buttermere fells.

But he was unique among the runners in one respect.

Mike is leader of the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team which played such a big part in helping to ferry flooded walkers to safety.

And he did not know that his team had been called out until he arrived at Gatesgath Farm at Buttermere at dusk.

Until then Mike had been battling the atrocious conditions on the hills like everyone else; head down and pressing on into the mist, rain and lashing winds.

So what happened when he arrived at Willie Richardson's farm in Buttermere and found the newly built sheep shed full with 400 bedraggled runners bivouacking for the night on the newly laid concrete?

Before he knew it, he was back out on the hills until nearly midnight in his rescuer's role as a saviour of the fells.

Did he not have a hint conditions were too bad during his time on the hill?

“Not really," he says. “Bad weather in the Lakes is something we've always been used to."

But then Mike, 43, was blooded on the Lakeland fells in more matter-of-fact times.

A land surveyor at Sellafield, he went to Harrington Junior School and then Workington Grammar School, staying on until he was 18. He then did day release at Workington College.

His first job was junior site engineer at Oughterside opencast coal mine near Aspatria. It was there that he decided to focus on land surveying, for a job with its open air appeal.

He puts his enthusiasm and love of the hills down to going to the Lakes from an early age with his parents Jack and Paulyne Park when they lived at a police house in Salterbeck, Workington.

So it's not surprising that Mike and his wife Tracey, who works at the Whitehaven News, encourage their daughters Bramble, nine, and Millie, six, to enjoy the great outdoors.

Mike's father moved on to become the police sergeant at Cockermouth.

His mother began as a district nurse, becoming a community nursing manager for West Cumbria.

The next influence in his formative years was, he says, a PE teacher at Salterbeck Secondary School called Mr McVennon; and a Mr Howarth who taught English or history.

“Pupils used to go on these trips to the Old School House in Boot, in Eskdale," says Mike. “That was the first time I ever tied on a rope and climbed a crag.

“Then I joined Seaton Scouts and started to find my feet.

“We did everything; rock climbing, abseiling, canoeing, potholing, fell walking, even orienteering. Then my dad became a scoutmaster at Seaton Scouts too.

“Scout leaders I remember were Steven Shepherd, Alan Tinnion, Malcolm McDougal and Chris Albion. They took us everywhere, and we camped all over the Lake District; what a bunch of live-wires we were."

Mountain rescue took a part in his life from when he was 13 and his father joined the Cockermouth team.

At 18 he reached the age when he could officially join the team and go on call-outs.

Two friends from Seaton Scouts – David Brydon and Alan Irving – who had also been climbing companions on local crags, joined at the same time.

And a whole new era began.

Mike says there is now so much more to mountain rescue these days.

The 40 members of the Cockermouth team are each trained to a casualty care standard and are capable of using special equipment such as a defibrillator to help save victims of heart attacks on the fell.

He says: “We are very much a Jack-of-all-trades team with each team member capable of dealing with all situations we may encounter on a rescue.

“It can make a difference in saving a life.”

He adds: “Cockermouth team has always run on ‘the crack’, good humour and camaraderie.

“It’s what holds us together through the good times and the bad, and long may it do so.”

Mobile phones, he asserts, have revolutionised mountain rescue.

“Whatever their drawbacks, they have saved more people than they’ve ever caused problems for the team."

And he pays tribute to Maureen and her son Willie Richardson (and partner Judith Cubby) at Gatesgarth Farm for the help they have given to the team through the years.

For more than 50 years, Cockermouth Mountain Rescue has had a base at the head of Buttermere with a ready welcome, and where tired rescuers are greeted with mugs of hot tea at the kitchen table.

Maureen, 76, president of the rescue team, and Mike says she symbolises what the team stands for.

“Cockermouth rescue team is a totally voluntary organisation," he says. “We're not paid and we only run through charity status.

“It is only because of the support we get from the local community, and from people like the Richardson family, that we keep going.

“We never forget this basic fact."