Labrador Penny hauled to safety from ledge at base of Pecca Falls gorge

A dog that became stranded on a narrow ledge at the foot of a 40ft (12m) cliff beside a Yorkshire landmark waterfall has been winched back to dry land and reunited with her owners. The rescue at Pecca Falls, in Ingleton, was carried out on Saturday afternoon by the volunteer-run Cave Rescue Organisation (CRO) working alongside North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

The callout came in at around 15:15 BST, when it became clear that eight-year-old Labrador Penny had fallen into the river at the bottom of the falls and was unable to get out on her own. Rather than remaining in the water, the dog managed to scramble partway up the rock face and settle on a small rocky outcrop roughly 6.5ft (2m) above the river, at the base of the cliff.

Rescuers had to engineer a solution for a location with almost no room to manoeuvre. Using a rope system, a volunteer was lowered down towards the ledge so that he could reach Penny and secure her. She was then "hauled back up the gorge", according to the Cave Rescue Organisation, before being brought back to the surface and returned to her waiting owners. Photographs released by the charity show the volunteer descending in climbing equipment and waterproofs, with the light brown Labrador held carefully against his chest.

The operation also involved North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service's Ripon swiftwater rescue team, which provided support downstream from the point where Penny was stranded. That element of the response reflects the geography of the site: Pecca Falls forms part of a steep, narrow limestone gorge, and the confined, fast-flowing water at its foot means any rescue has to be coordinated on both the cliff face and the river itself.

Pecca Falls is one of the best-known features of the Ingleton area and forms part of the celebrated Ingleton Waterfalls, a chain of falls on the River Wenning. The site drops through five falls, with a combined descent of more than 30m (98ft), and is a popular destination for walkers and visitors throughout the year — particularly attractive in summer, when the surrounding Yorkshire Dales countryside draws large numbers of people.

The responsibility for the technical response lay with the Cave Rescue Organisation, a Yorkshire Dales charity based in Clapham that covers the Yorkshire Dales National Park and extends its work into Lancashire and Cumbria. Formed in 1935, the charity currently counts more than 80 volunteers, who regularly attend mountain and cave rescues and also assist with other public service incidents. The Pecca Falls callout is one example of the kind of work that rarely makes national headlines but nevertheless involves volunteers training hard for high-consequence, low-frequency events.

Such teams operate with the knowledge that emergencies at a given location can recur. Rocks around waterfalls and gorges are typically wet, smooth and algae-covered, presenting significant risks not only to dogs unlucky enough to fall in but also to people descending after them. Access for a volunteer rescuer is constrained by the same features that trapped the dog in the first place, which is why rope systems rather than ladders or casual climbs tend to be used.

This is not the first occasion on which the charity has saved a pet at the same waterfall. In March, the team used a similar rope and pulley arrangement to free a dog that had fallen 26.2ft (8m) and also ended up stuck on a narrow ledge. Two rescues at the same spot within a few months have prompted reminders about the care that dogs require around fast water, steep drops and wet rock in the Dales.

For the volunteers involved, the operation is likely to have felt routine in the best sense. CRO members train regularly for exactly this kind of scenario, and the practice of lowering a team member to an animal, securing it, and hauling it back up a rope is a well-established technique in rope-access and cave rescue. The same skills used to recover a stranded casualty are applied here to bring a frightened dog to safety.

There is also a wider context to the story. Mountain, cave and swiftwater rescue in the UK is heavily dependent on volunteers who give up their time for callouts that are often unpaid and frequently occur in difficult weather and remote terrain. Charities such as CRO exist precisely because specialist rescue capability in places like the Dales cannot be provided by the emergency services alone; the fire and rescue service on Saturday was able to bring its own swiftwater expertise, but the specialist gorge and cave capability came from the charity.

For Penny's owners, the outcome was a happy reunion at the top of the gorge after an afternoon of worry. For the Cave Rescue Organisation, it was a reminder of the value of the training and equipment maintained by more than 80 volunteers — and of the fact that one of the most scenic spots in the Yorkshire Dales remains, in all seasons, a genuinely hazardous place for an animal that strays too close to the edge.