Man dies despite difficult rescue

The helicopter had to follow the track due to low cloud.

A man has died suffering a suspected heart attack after being taken ill whilst walking on Snowdon.

His death came despite the efforts of a search and rescue helicopter which had hovered 10ft (3m) above a railway line in low cloud to reach him.

The man, 51, was flown by a crew from RAF Valley on Anglesey to hospital in Bangor after Saturday's incident.

Capt Mathew Gower said the skilled manoeuvre was something the crew had trained for but it was "not nice".

"We were flying in cloud, quite close to the railway, and it is something we are trained for, but it's not nice," he said.

"We were about 10ft (3m) from the ground, from Clogwyn to about 100m short of the summit, which took us about 10 minutes.

"We did it in stages and then stopped every so often focusing on the ground beneath our feet," he added.

Winch man Lee Clark was then deployed to run the 200m to the casualty, before they were both winched back into the aircraft.

The helicopter then climbed vertically and broke through the cloud to fly to hospital in Bangor, Capt Gower added.