The weekend of 6-7-8 February 09 was spent in the highland village of Braemar, our host for the weekend, Braemar Search and Rescue team. This course was one of three annual avalanche training programmes for Scottish mountain rescue team members. The weather and snow conditions were perfect, in fact it’s not been so good since the winter of 94.
I was helping with the delivery of the training programme under my role as national training officer for Scottish mountain rescue. Braemar team trainers and members delivered the main content of this programme and it showed how much experience those guys really have with avalanche rescue they not only regularly practise for it they actually do it for real.
In all this season 87 mountain rescue team members have received avalanche search & rescue training, our three national courses are titled:
Level 1 “The basics done well”A course for those who search in small teams in often high risk snow conditions the course mainky covers safe route and search travel, avalanche survival using transceivers and probing techniques.
Level 2, “Avalanche Improver”This course refreshed skills in safe travel, avalanche casualty care, scene management, Search dogs and the multi agency approach to avalanche rescue.
Lvel 3, “Avalanche Search & Rescue”A course designed for those involved with avalanche incident control and deployment of rescue resources, top end search management techniques and caualty management and extraction, scene searching techniques, search dogs and multi-agencies, this course included practical exercises including table top and in the field.
Some pics of the course participants in action.




LOVE THE NEW WEBSITE – well done