SMT Project Spotlight – Oban Mountain Rescue Team Replace Vital Equipment

In the second in a series of articles, we share news of a project funded by our parent-charity, the Scottish Mountaineering Trust, to whom we channel any profits made from our books. You can find out more about the Trust on their website, and read about other projects they have funded here.

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An £8,000 SMT grant to Oban Mountain Rescue Team has helped keep their digital equipment up to date and reliable. The Oban team needed to replace batches of their GPS units and avalanche transceivers, 15 of each, as they’d been in use for around 10 years and were beginning to fail. The new devices cost a total of £10,600, and the team raised the balance themselves.

Oban MRT started up in 2001, making it one of Scotland’s youngest, and the 40 or so volunteers include dog handlers, doctors and paramedics. As one of mainland Scotland’s westernmost teams, it deals with call-outs to nearby Ben Cruachan. The team has also flown over the water to Mull and made long journeys south, down to Lochgilphead and even the Kintyre peninsula. Neighbours are Killin to the east, Arrochar to the south and Glencoe to the north.

GPS units and transceivers have been essential kit since the team’s inception—each member will carry a GPS on every call-out. The obvious benefit is that it tells the user where exactly he or she is. But there are other ways the devices help a team in a search or rescue effort. For example, if a searcher finds a casualty, they can share their exact location straight away with all the other team members, who can then head directly to the right spot. The GPS also provides a reliable, detailed record of the search area its user has covered. This, in turn, can be shared with, for example, the police or another rescue team on the hill.

As the name tells you, avalanche transceivers are for winter work only, and they are now vital for any avalanche search. Of the 25–30 Oban MRT call-outs in a typical year, 10 or so are expected in the winter months. More and more climbers, walkers and especially ski-tourers are now carrying transceivers as a matter of course. They all use the same wavelength, so any searcher can pick up the signal from any casualty’s transceiver.