A CLIMBER was airlifted to hospital after a 12-hour operation in the Cairngorms, which saw him lowered 500 feet to the ground from a small ledge.

It was the seventh rescue in as many days for Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team, who together with Braemar MRT sent 31 members to help the climber.

A team doctor cared for the climber on a small ledge 500ft up the Shelterstone Crag after he fell on Saturday.

The alarm was raised around 5.30pm.

He was then lowered over a long distance to the base of the crag before a Coastguard search and rescue helicopter took him to hospital. His condition is unknown.

A Cairngorm MRT spokesman. “After a complex, technical rescue, the casualty was lowered to the coire floor and carried to a landing site. The helicopter finished that bit of the job and took him to hospital.”

The rescuers had four hours trudging across the Cairngorms at night, “with monster sacks of rescue gear for the volunteers”.

An injured climber was airlifted to hospital after falling over 30 feet and ending up on a ledge hundreds of feet up in the Cairngorms on Thursday.

The man was left stuck on the ledge above the valley floor at Lurcher’s Crag, which overlooks the Lairig Ghru hill-pass in the central area of the mountain range.

Team leader Willie Anderson said “awesome flying” by an Inverness Coastguard helicopter crew meant the climber could be airlifted.

He was flown to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.