A woman’s SOS on Facebook led to the rescue of a man on Cader Idris.

At around 5.30pm on Tuesday, 16 July, a woman posted on Facebook that she had found a man on Cader Idris with no food and in a dehydrated state and that she needed help.

The post was spotted by one of the woman’s friends who alerted North Wales Police, who in turn contacted Aberdyfi Search & Rescue Team call-handlers.

Initial inquiries and strategies did not provide any further information about the location, and attempts to contact the informant’s phone repeatedly would not connect.

With little information to work with, it was decided to send a hasty party of volunteers up the Minffordd path and also the Pony Path; the mountain was reasonably busy so it was hoped that these parties would either encounter the casualty or speak to someone who had seen where they were.

As volunteers were making their way to the foot of the mountain, North Wales Police were informed that the woman and her partner had managed to walk the man down to the Minffordd car park where she had managed to find a phone signal.

The parties were stood down, but a small number of volunteers continued to Minffordd to assess the casualty and arrange further help if required.

As team volunteers spoke with the casualty, a man in his 40s and from the Caerphilly area, a confused picture emerged; it seemed that the man had travelled to the area with a friend by bus, and had camped on the mountain the previous night.

He had last seen his friend near the summit shortly after 9am and for some reason the pair had gone in different directions shortly afterwards. The second man was later traced to his home in Caerphilly.

Team volunteer Graham O’Hanlon, who was one of the incident co-ordinators, said: “The real heroes of this rescue were the initial informant and partner who took care of the man and got him safely off the mountain. The phone signal is very patchy in places and the woman made several attempts to call 999 which all failed, but for whatever reason her post to Facebook connected. It is not a conventional way to contact the emergency services, nor one that we would encourage moving forwards, but it was all she could access at the time.

“It is sad that she has received a degree of criticism on social media for her resourceful actions, but we are grateful that she had a friend who took her seriously and brought this to our attention.”