A party of "10 scouts" reported "missing" overnight in Connemara National Park at the weekend are recovering after an extensive search by 10 mountain rescue teams.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Search and Rescue Dog Association were involved in the alert, which took an unexpected turn when a tourist was also treated for a suspected coronary below Diamond Hill in Letterfrack.
The "alarm" was first raised some weeks ago, when teams affiliated to the Irish Mountain Rescue Association (IMRA) were summoned by their counterparts in Galway to a national exercise.
Eighty volunteers were joined by actors and members of the Galway Mountain Rescue team, role-playing missing scouts, concerned parents and relatives, and even journalists.
The rescue began at first light in Connemara National Park on Saturday, and air-scenting dogs were the first to be sent "up the hill". They were followed by representatives from the Galway, Sligo-Leitrim, Dublin-Wicklow, Kerry, South-East and the North-Western mountain rescue teams, the Tramore Cliff Rescue Association, members of the PSNI and the Irish Red Cross.
IMRA holds a national exercise annually. Proving volunteerism is not quite dead, IMRA members responded to 229 separate incidents, assisted 350 people of whom 130 were injured; and put in the equivalent of 1,047 working days in rescue activity last year.
Ten people died in incidents on Irish mountains last year.
