Scottish Mountain Rescue represents 23 volunteer Mountain Rescue teams with over 800 volunteers. These teams offer a world class, front line, voluntary search and rescue service that is available any hour, any day and any weather.
The spectacular Scottish landscapes attract many people but they can be dangerous as well as beautiful.
In 2015, Scottish Mountain Rescue Volunteers gave up 39,728 hours of their time during callouts and assisted 776 people in 579 incidents. Winter climbing accidents are often reported in the news but two thirds of the mountaineering incidents involved summer hillwalking. Furthermore, they do not only aid people in the mountains: 248 of these incidents were non-mountaineering incidents, such as cycling, missing persons, and flooding.
The Scottish Mountain Rescue volunteers are always there when things take a turn for the worse, and often work in very challenging and hostile environments to help keep all of us safe.
To help support these teams, Chris and I are taking part in The Great Outdoors Challenge, which entails walking across Scotland from Shiel Bridge on the west coast to Montrose on the east coast. Starting on the 13th May, we aim to walk 291km in 14 days carrying all our equipment for the journey. We will be wild camping for the majority of the trip, stopping at hostels for just three nights.
This will be a considerable challenge as, although we do a fair amount of hill walking, I have only been out for one night (two days walking) and Chris has been out for a maximum of four days. It has therefore entailed a lot of detailed route planning, organisation, and training.
You can keep up-to-date with our progress here: https://cjoutdoors.wordpress.com/category/tgo-challenge/
