A COASTGUARD told last night how his charity challenge turned to tragedy after two rescue operations on the UK's toughest peaks.

One man died and two people were rescued during Paul Waugh's fundraising challenge to take on the UK's Three Peaks and the Three Peaks of Yorkshire at the weekend.

Hours after starting his trek up Ben Nevis, in Scotland, the east Cleveland coastguard found himself involved in a rescue operation to help two men off the mountain.

The men, believed to be in their late 20s, had attempted the tough climb without the proper equipment.

Mr Waugh, 43, from Skelton, east Cleveland, said: "They were not equipped to be up there and had become stuck because of the snow. I had passed them on the way up and they were trying to get down - I watched them down and carried on.

"When I was on my way back, they were further up than they were originally - someone had egged them on to keep going then cleared off and left them."

Mr Waugh said the men were about to take a route, known as the Five Finger Gully, which would have seen them falling straight off the edge of the mountain.

"I told them to follow me and ended up walking them down," he added. "I had my radio with me, so I could have got help if there had been a problem.

"They didn't have a clue. The kit they had on was bad - the boots were something you would buy in the high street. They were certainly petrified. When we got back, they could not thank me enough."

The drama continued when Mr Waugh climbed Snowdon, in Wales, on Saturday.

He said: "There was a bloke at the top panicking and I thought he was having a heart attack. When I spoke to him, he said his friend had fallen off the cliff and two other friends were stuck."

Mr Waugh radioed fellow coastguard Mike Takacs, who was at the bottom of the mountain, to alert the rescue team.

"As I came back down, I could see where it was all happening.

"They got a helicopter to bring ropes and stuff to recover the man's body and rescue the other two.

"As a coastguard, you don't expect to rescue someone 2,000ft up a mountain."

At the top of the Three Peaks, Mr Waugh left a laminated newspaper cutting in memory of east Cleveland climbers Colin Riddiough, John Plews, and Paul Dick who died in a mountain tragedy in Spain last month.