What do I do if the weather turns while I am out walking?

Weather rarely turns instantly. What catches people out is deciding too late — carrying on for another half hour, then finding themselves in cloud, cold and unsure of their position, with all three problems arriving at once.

Safety

Step by step

1. Watch for the signs early.Cloud dropping onto the tops, wind rising, temperature falling, visibility shrinking. Deciding when you can still see is enormously easier than deciding when you cannot.
2. Put layers and waterproofs on before you need them.Getting wet and cold first and then trying to fix it in wind and rain is much harder. Stopping for two minutes early saves a great deal later.
3. Fix your position while you can still see.Identify exactly where you are on the map before the cloud arrives. Navigating from a known point is straightforward; relocating in cloud is not.
4. Decide to descend, and do it.Losing height gets you out of wind and cloud and into warmer air. Almost every worsening situation improves on descent, and abandoning the route is not a failure.
5. Choose the safest descent, not the fastest.A known path down the wrong side of the hill is far better than an unknown steep slope in cloud. Crags do not appear on the ground until you are on them.
6. Navigate on a bearing if visibility goes.Take a bearing to a known safe feature, walk it in short legs to visible features, and count paces to measure distance. Do not wander looking for a landmark.
7. Keep the group together.Move at the pace of the slowest, keep everyone in sight, and never let anyone go ahead or drop behind. Separated groups are how simple situations become serious.
8. Eat and drink.Cold and tired people make poor decisions. Food is the quickest way to restore both warmth and judgement, and people stop eating exactly when they most need to.
9. Watch everyone for signs of getting cold.Shivering, stumbling, clumsiness with zips, becoming quiet or unusually irritable. The person affected is often the last to notice.
10. Shelter properly if you have to stop.Out of the wind, behind a wall or boulder, insulated from the ground, in a group shelter or foil blanket. Wind is what takes heat away fastest.
11. Call for help before it becomes critical.999, ask for police, then mountain rescue. Give a grid reference if you have one. Calling early with a manageable problem is far better than calling late with a serious one.
12. Do not push on to complete the route.The commonest contributing factor in incidents is continuing because of the plan rather than the conditions. The hill will still be there.

Tips

• Descend. It solves wind, cloud and cold simultaneously.
• Fix your position while you can still see. Relocating in cloud is a different order of difficulty.
• Eat something. Cold, tired people make bad decisions and stop noticing they are cold.

Common mistakes

• Carrying on to finish the route — Committing to a plan made in the valley in better conditions is the single most common factor in mountain incidents. Conditions, not the plan, should decide.
• Descending an unknown steep slope to save time — Crags, gullies and drops are invisible in cloud until you are at the edge of them. A longer known route down is far safer than a direct unknown one.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask