“We didn’t have any at all 12, 18 months ago, it wasn't an area we were getting called to from a rescue point of view,” Inspector in charge of Northern Search and Rescue Darren Hopkins said.

“There have been an increased number of jobs we’ve been to.”

The narrow and steep mountain bike trails can make rescuing injured riders a challenging task.

“Given most of it’s steep and rough terrain, which is the nature of those bike trails, we can’t always get vehicle access to them and most of the time if we do have to carry someone out [on a] stretcher if we've got a number of walkers it’s always difficult on those sorts of tracks,” Inspector Hopkins said. 

“We’ve had to carry some [injured riders] out, weve had the helicopter attend as well, obviously with that sort of injury with push bikes theres a lot of risk to neck and spinal injury.

“The trail has emergency points along the way, now we’re working with the Dorset council through the State Emergency Service to provide some mapping of those trails so that we know exactly where, if they refer to a certain point, we know where that is.

“That will then help us identify some evacuation points as well.”

Inspector Hopkins acknowledges mountain biking is an inherently dangerous sport and that is part of the appeal, but said there are precautions riders can take when heading out to the trails.

“It’s the same as going bushwalking by yourself, tell someone where you’re going, if you're not back by a certain time tell them what they should be doing i.e. calling police or coming to look for them along the trail,” he said. 

“If you're very extreme and up there by yourself take an emergency device such as a personal epirb or a Spot so that if you do injure yourself and you're there alone you can set that off and help will come.”