A YOUNG walker who plunged more than 100ft into a gully on a Lake District fell owes his life to a 'brilliant' rescue team and a smartphone app.

Zane Pickavance, from Ulverston, set off with five friends on Sunday afternoon in an attempt to find the Priest Hole cave on Dove Crag.

The 20-year-old had wanted to camp in the beauty spot, which has received increased attention since featuring on the BBC's Secret Britain.

However, visibility was poor. His friends had left as planned and he decided to pitch his tent.

"Everything was fine," he recalled. "I was there for the night and had planned the route. I planned to go the same way I came up.

"I got up in the morning and there was bad visibility. It was quite steep where I was and there was natural steps going down."

He carried on walking down what he thought was the correct route but could not see very far in front of him. The ground was wet and he slipped, falling more than 100ft down a steep gully.

"Adrenaline was flowing when I fell," he said. "I was only just thinking how to stop myself. I remember putting my hands out and seeing rocks come closer to my face."

When Mr Pickavance stopped falling he saw that he had blood on his hands but said that he did not feel any pain due to the adrenaline. He got out his phone and tried to call 999 but had no signal.

"I had to climb back up," he said, recalling that it was almost a vertical drop and he only had moss and grass to hold on to. "I climbed for about an hour to get full signal.

"I knew I wouldn't make it if I stayed where I was. I needed to risk falling again to survive.

"I knew if I stayed there I had no chance because there was nobody around. I thought: 'If I stay I am going to die, so I might as well try'."

Having made it to the top at around 9am and holding on to a rock to secure himself, he was then able to speak to Mike Blakey, team leader of Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team.

"Luckily this young man had a good mobile data signal," said Mr Blakey. "Usually, this would mean that we could send a text message which would allow us to locate him on our mapping systems."

However, this was unsuccessful and it came to light that Mr Pickavance did not know where he was.

"The man had given the name of a nearby hill, Hart Crag, in his first 999 call but this didn’t stack up with the description of the area he was describing on the phone," Mr Blakey said.

Instead, Mr Blakey used the ‘Find My Friends’ app that was installed on Mr Pickavance's Apple iPhone. He was then able to send a grid reference to the team and two helicopters searching for him.

"Mike was brilliant," Mr Pickavance said. "He kept me as up-to-date as he could. He did a good job at keeping me calm. The whole team was brilliant."

Team members, with the aid of a coastguard rescue helicopter from Prestwick in Scotland and the Great North Air Ambulance, were then able to look for Mr Pickavance.

"You have a lot of things running through your head. You feel on your own, you feel isolated, you are not sure if you are going to be rescued," said Mr Pickavance, who saw helicopters flying overhead and attempted to signal them with a whistle and by waving his arms.

Eventually, a mountain rescue team member found him and he was winched to safety. From the first 999 call, the ordeal lasted three hours.

"I just felt relief," Mr Pickavance said. "It's a hard thing to explain because you are on your own. I was just happy to get off the side of that mountain."

Without the help of the rescue team and his iPhone, Mr Pickavance believes that he would have died.

"I will be sticking with iPhone," he said. "I sent that message about where I was and literally a second later my phone died so I did not know if it had been received or not."

After being winched to safety, Mr Pickavance was taken to the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, and was released the same day.

"I am very very lucky," he told the Gazette. "I have got quite a lot of all-over bruising. I am walking on crutches and I hit my face on rocks on the way down. I'm just very lucky, just cuts and bruises."

Mr Pickavance is now hoping to fundraise for Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team and is thinking about organising a charity walk.

His mum, Jacqui Pickavance, who runs Adonis Traditional Barbers in Ulverston, said that she will be holding a day where all her profits from the barbershop are donated.

"I would like to say a massive thank you to them," Mr Pickavance said. "I cannot thank them enough. I think what they do is brilliant."

Although the app proved to be crucial part of the rescue, Mr Blakey said that it came to light that the man had posted on Facebook during the incident.

"Not only did this waste the small amount of battery life he had left, and that we needed to keep in contact with him, but his friends then started to make additional 999 calls to the police," he said. "This was unhelpful and a distraction for all concerned during what was a complex rescue. In fact, his mobile phone battery died a few minutes later and we therefore lost contact with him. This was probably avoidable in this situation as he was high up and had a good signal."

However, Mr Pickavance later clarified that he had been sending a screenshot of his location to a friend in a 'last ditch attempt' to get help, in between the failed text message attempt and the use of the app.

Mr Blakey reminded people taking to the fells to check the weather forecast. If walkers in trouble do not get a response from a rescue team within 15 minutes then they should call 999 and ask to be patched back to the team. They should also save battery life on a phone for essential calls.

"Do not use your phone for anything else and do not phone other people," Mr Blakey said. "You need to keep the line free for the rescue team. I cannot stress enough that this may save your life."