Flash of genius rescues stranded walker

Yesterday, Malcolm Murray became possibly the first survivor of a major search and rescue operation to be branded "a genius".

The 23-year-old amazed and impressed his rescuers by using a camera flash to penetrate the thick mist that had caused him to become hopelessly lost, and catch the attention of a helicopter pilot.

The resourceful student faced a slow and lingering death from cold after losing his way on Barvas Moor, Lewis, as melting ice and snow left him thigh-deep in freezing water and thick mist left him hopelessly disorientated.

Murray set out on Friday afternoon for a quick walk with his Jack Russell Buttons on Barvas Moor, one of the most bleak and beautiful stretches of landscape in the British Isles.

Despite being a local, and an experienced walker, the combination of mist and melting water left Murray lost and in danger. During his 14-hour ordeal he stumbled an estimated seven miles into the deepest and most desolate part of the moor.

Murray told Scotland on Sunday: "I was gearing myself up to spend the night, but it really is hard to say whether I would have got through the night or not. By the time I was rescued, I was very, very cold and wet through."

The only useful equipment Murray had with him was a mobile phone, which he kept working as long as possible by rubbing it in his hands to keep it warm, and a compact camera. These two gadgets effectively saved his life.

He said: "I had only nipped up to take the dog for a quick walk. I was only planning to be there for a couple of hours.

"When I went up the hill, there were patches of snow and ice. The moor and some parts were quite hard with frost when I left. There was a bit of a thaw so there was quite a lot of water.

"There had been a bit of fog when I left. But when I got to the top it just came right down and I realised I had no idea where I was. I was basically lost. All my normal orientation was wrong. I didn't know where north or south or east or west was."

Murray walked towards what he thought was the Pentland Road, the single track that crosses the moor, connecting the Lewis capital of Stornoway with the island's west coast.

In fact, he was heading ever deeper in to the moor. Realising how serious the situation was becoming, he phoned his father, Murdo Murray, a recently retired senior council official who used to be responsible for helping to co-ordinate emergency operations in the Western Isles.

Murray senior came up with a plan to find his son: driving up and down the Pentland Road, beeping the car horn every mile or so from Stornoway in the east to Carloway in the west. But his son didn't hear a thing and by late afternoon the pair decided they had to call in professional rescuers.

Murray said: "I was getting worried but I was trying to stay calm and stay where I was. I knew there were guys there and I was just hoping they would come across where I was. It was pretty cold. That was the worst thing. I was soaked through so it felt a lot colder than it probably was. Buttons was even more tired, just exhausted."

Four rescue teams, each numbering five men, set off to find Murray on foot. The Coastguard also scrambled its helicopter. However, the teams couldn't get a fix on Murray's mobile because Lewis doesn't have enough masts to provide triangulation.

Finally, Murray got a lucky break and made use of it. He said: "I could see the helicopter lights coming and going."

So, when the chopper got close, he pressed his camera flash over and over again, lighting up the misty, pitch-black sky, both to the naked eye and the helicopter's sophisticated infrared systems.

"It was the only source of light I could think of," he said.

Murray's flash was spotted by Captain Richard "Tricky" Dane on board Stornoway Coastguard's new state-of-the-art Sikorsky S92 helicopter. "It really was very clever use of the equipment he had with him," Dane said. "We were taxi-hovering along, just 10 to 15 feet off the ground and we could only see about 100 yards ahead of us. Then I spotted a flash in the sky and our winchman, Phil Warrington, used the infrared to see two little red blotches, one of Malcolm and the other of Buttons. It really was the flash that saved him."

A Coastguard spokeswoman said: "The guy was lucky and managed to flash a couple of times. It was quite ingenious."

Another rescuer was more emphatic. "The chap is a bit of a genius," he said.

Murray insisted last night that he was "embarrassed" by the praise and heaped all his thanks on his rescuers and on the Salvation Army volunteers who fed him when he was finally rescued.

"They gave me hot sweet tea, a bacon roll and some chocolate," he said. "Exactly the kind of stuff I had been thinking about when I was up on the moor. It was great.

"It was really reassuring to be able to speak to guys from the Coastguard on my phone, just having a voice at the other end. I am really grateful to the Coastguard and everyone else who helped. Without them I would have been really stuck."

Murray senior, who had spent the evening at home on the telephone worried sick, also praised his son's calmness and presence of mind. "He did absolutely the right thing to stay in the one place. If he had moved he could have ended up in a bog and he might not have come out of that," he said. "Malcolm was about as far from any residential area that you can get on Lewis. He certainly has found a new respect for the moor. When you live beside it, when you live on it, you don't really realise how dangerous it is. He certainly won't be going out again without his GPS, his compass and a map.

"Although there was an upside. Buttons is already a celebrity dog on Lewis. She has won the annual dog fancy dress competition in Stornoway seven times and she had just retired from that. We think going in a helicopter was just her last effort to make a claim for fame."