Mountain rescuers are resourceful, with a battery of equipment and techniques to find and help those of us in need on the fells.

A Welsh team has probably just added a new method to the manual. Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) used an ingenious way of pinpointing a lost walker on Snowdon.

North Wales Police received a call last Friday from a man in ‘a despondent state’ who was lost near the foot of Wales’ highest mountain. The MRT was mobilised just before noon, with 19 of their members joined by three search and rescue dogs and two RAF members.

The man was finally found by the team after they listened to noise of an RAF helicopter via the man’s mobile phone. He was found five hours after the search began.

Team chairman Gwyn Roberts said: “They found the man's location by using the RAF helicopter to sweep backwards and forwards along the mountainside and then listening to the background noise on the man’s mobile to see if the helicopter could be heard.”

The 46-year-old man was found low down at the foot of the 1,085m (3,560ft) mountain.

Llanberis MRT was involved in 84 rescue incidents last year, 34 of which involved the RAF search-and-rescue helicopter, accounting for nearly 2,000 man-hours.