A FEATURE of Apple's iPhone which allows users to trace their friends helped mountain rescuers to find a young walker who had spent the night on the fells after getting lost.

Patterdale Mountain Rescue team volunteers were called out at 9am on Monday morning after a 999 call reported a young walker had fallen and suffered a head injury near to Hart Crag just north of Grasmere.

Team leader Mike Blakey said: "Luckily this young man had a good mobile data signal.

"Usually, this would mean that we could send a text message which would allow us to locate him on our mapping systems. Unfortunately this didn’t work due to incorrect settings on the man’s mobile phone.

"Whilst team members arrived at the rescue base and then began ascending the mountain, I continued to attempt to work out the man’s location by speaking to him on the phone.

"It became apparent that he had no idea where he was as he had spent the night on the mountain having failed to locate the Priest Hole cave where he had planned to stay the evening before.

"He had set off in the forecast heavy rain and cloud and having spent the night in thick cloud he began to descend the wrong way in the morning and the fell into the top of a steep gully well above the cave."

After discovering the stranded walker was using an iPhone, Mr Blakey asked him to activate the Find my Friends function which allowed rescuers to see his location on a satellite image using their own iPad.

Two helicopters were then sent to the scene and the man was found and taken to hospital.

FIND MY FRIENDS: THE APP

Find My Friends allows you to easily locate friends and family using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Just install the app and invite friends to share locations by choosing from your contacts or entering their email addresses.

When a friend accepts your invitation using the Find My Friends app on their device, you can start following their location immediately and they can send a quick request to follow your location.

If at any time you don’t want to be followed, you can hide your location with a single switch.

Find My Friends lets you set up location-based alerts that can notify you automatically when a friend arrives at the airport, a child leaves school, or a family member arrives home safely.

You can also set up alerts to notify friends about changes in your location.