By Harry McLaggan

One of the most famous rescue helicopters in Britain remains icebound 3000 feet up in the Cairngorm mountains.

Rescue 137 from RAF Lossiemouth in Moray was requested on Monday night to go to the aid of a climber with a suspected broken ankle.

The task was to rescue the man from Coire an Sneachda—the Corrie of the Snows.

Freezing weather saw the blades ice up and the helicopter was forced to land, with the casualty stretchered off the hill by members of Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team.

An RAF spokesman said, “There is a small party of RAF Mountain Rescue Team personnel looking after the helicopter in conditions which are –8C and with winds of 35 mph representing a windchill factor of –16C.”

RAF spokesman Michael Mulford said that blizzards and high winds were keeping the helicopter grounded.

He said yesterday, “The plan was to have a look at it…It is already clear that they would be very lucky if they could get it ready and fly it out. You have two things you need to do. You need to get de-icing equipment into it and you have to have a weather window to fly it out.”

Of the incident he added, “The helicopter had a clearance of 1000 feet which is very comfortable even in bad weather so in they went, put the winchman down and he tended to the casualty.

“And then the next thing they knew they were all in a blizzard so they were stuck and very quickly the Cairngorms’ worst weather turned a 10-tonne working helicopter into a 10-tonne ice sculpture.

“It is one of these situations, even with an injured casualty, if the captain’s view is that you cannot fly safely then you don’t fly.”

Attempts will be made today to fly it off the mountain if the weather improves.

Rescue 138 from Lossiemouth has been put on standby to take engineers in but the spokesman said that was still weather permitting.