The Mayo Mountain Rescue Team were tasked at 7pm last Sunday night to search for a missing person who was overdue on their return from walking the Letterkeen loop walk.
The team set up an incident command post at the Bothy car park in Letterkeen. The person had managed to contact a family member earlier before their mobile ran out of battery.
The team tasked five MMRT search parties to start the search at different locations with two teams covering the Tarsaghaun area north and south along the Bangor trail while the other three teams covered from Letterkeen north along the Bangor trail and looped walk routes.
The missing person was located after midnight along the Owenduff section of the Bangor trail. While cold and tired, the missing person responded to search team calls and was assessed, given dry warm clothing before being guided out with the team back to incident command vehicle.
The team returned to the incident command base with the person at Letterkeen at 4am before being stood down.
According to spokes person for the team: "The weather conditions were dry and clear although ground conditions were very wet, it can be easy to miss a looped walk turn as happened in this case and end up off your intended route but this missing person was able to give a family member a call before the battery in their phone depleted to alert for help.
"The team would like to thank Rescue 118 official, the HSE and An Garda Siochana for their assistance. It was a combined response and successful search and rescue operation."
