A FATHER whose son was at the centre of three near-fatal accidents on a Lake District fell side has revealed he was listening on the phone when the helicopter that came to rescue his lad crashed.

Student Alan McGing, 20, of Bootle, Merseyside, was climbing on Pike O'Stickle, in Great Langdale, when he fell and shattered his upper right arm.

The mobile phone in his backpack mysteriously dialled his home number in the fall and the injured man began to talk to his father.

The Royal Navy Sea King helicopter quickly arrived and was lowering rescuers onto the crag when Mr McGing's father, 42, also called Alan, heard chaos erupt.

"The phone went quiet and I could hear shouting and noises," he said. "Then his friend sent me a text saying I'm sorry but I had to cut you off because I thought we were all going to die'."

One of the helicopter's rotor blades had smashed into the crag, showering the rescuers with fragments of rock.

The helicopter wheeled away, dragging a Kendal mountain rescuer, who was still dangling from its cable, with it.

Incredibly, all of this was heard by the father of the injured man, left sitting at home on Merseyside.

The Kendal mountain rescuer was Pete Munford, 38, of Garth Row, who plunged more than 70 feet down the mountain after he released himself from the cable.

Cumbria Police spokesman Mike Head said that Mr Munford was now at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

He had under-gone an oper-ation for spinal injuries but Mr Head said he was "okay in the circumstances".

The next day, as a Royal Air Force investigation team combed the mountainside for crash evidence, a 33-year-old team member slipped and fell 100 feet. He fractured his skull and badly damaged his elbow. This week, he was said to be "okay" and undergoing physiotherapy.

Mr McGing said he had personally thanked Mr Munford when the rescuer and his son were first taken to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.

"We all take for granted the fact that we can go out on the mountains and you don't realise they put their lives on the line," he said.

His son, who now has eight steel pins and a metal plate in his arm, agreed the service was taken for granted, saying: "I would like to thank them all for coming out and doing what they do."

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