A member of the team and his search dog help at work on the project to guide benighted walkers to safety

Lakeland mountain rescuers are shedding a little light on the fells to help lost walkers.

In a sign of the times, members of the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team have been out at known blackspots setting up special guides for benighted walkers. The innovative direction indicators will glow in the dark, and the team hopes it will cut the number of callouts to stranded mountain-goers who get caught out when the sun goes down.

The team said, unlike conventional signposts, the fell signs will blend in with the surroundings during daylight hours and will only be visible at night. The move has been prompted by the increasing number of ill equipped walkers who set out without torches. The team said it has identified the crucial areas where people are known to go wrong and have placed the signs to point them in the right direction.

Team leader Nick Owen said: “The purpose is to provide self-illuminating markers at key points on the fells. These ’signs’ will not be visible during daylight but will only glow once it gets dark.

“This is so that the large number of people who have failed to prepare for their walk, and don’t have a torch to light their own way down, can follow a safe route home.

One of the posters produced by the Langdale and Ambleside MRT to publicise the new glow-signs

“There has been an alarming increase in the number of ill equipped and ill prepared people going onto the hill. Our recommendation to take torches is more than often ignored so we have had to take drastic action.”

Mr Owen said help will still be on hand for those in need. “We will still be on call for those who can’t even follow our glowing signs,” he said, “no matter how ill prepared they may be. We will as ever be happy to drop whatever we are doing to go to their aid.”

He said essential items missing from some walkers’ rucksacks are: commonsense, compasses, maps, torches, whistles and waterproof trousers.

Mr Owen admitted some people may not be happy about the glowing signs. However, he said: “We would rather spend five minutes painting the signs than three hours searching for someone without a torch.”

The Langdale and Ambleside team is one of the Lake District’s busiest, having been called out to 33 incidents so far this year, the last of which was to help an exhausted young woman on a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition on the Stake Pass on Sunday.

Its 42 members range from outdoor instructors to police officers, musicians to microbiologists.