Talk about a bad trip.
A group of hikers in England’s Lake District became lost on Saturday, and a rescue team said that magic mushrooms were the culprit.
Not to suggest that the rescuers were passing judgment on their behavior. The “doughty men and women of Keswick mountain rescue,” as The Guardian put it, always aid intoxicated hikers — without an added dose of moral haranguing.
The all-volunteer rescue team was called to the Stoneycroft, Newlands, and Seathwaite area of Lake District National Park after reports that several young men were in trouble after taking psilocybin mushrooms.
Two members of the group looked so bad that several other walkers called mountain rescue to express concern for their safety.
Eleven volunteers eventually found the “disoriented party” and walked them down the fell.
“Mountain Rescue England and Wales, which is funded entirely by donations, prides itself on not judging those it helps, regardless of the cause of their distress,” The Guardian wrote.
Volunteer rescuers hard at work
As the group’s 24th rescue of 2023, the incident took just two hours to resolve.
A report of the callout says simply: “A number of calls were received via passersby, who had come across a group of young adult males who had taken magic mushrooms. Two in the group were feeling unwell, including the driver in the party. The casualties were walked down and given advice by the team medic regarding the timing of their onward travel.”
In this context, “onward travel” evidently means how long it would take before the hallucinogenic mushrooms left their system.
While clearly very important, the rescue group still runs entirely on donations and volunteers. According to their Facebook page, they’ve helped an 11-year-old with an ankle injury, a climber who dislocated his ankle, another climber with head injuries from a six-meter fall, and a mountain biker with a broken leg.
And that’s just the last two days.
There were only four days in 2022 when rescue teams were not called out to help someone in need.
