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Our volunteer teams experience a wide variety of incidents on call-outs, and they help a lot of different people too.

We have highlighted a few key stats below. To read more about the facts and stats from 2020, you can download our statistics report here.

You can also download our 2019 annual accounts here

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Incidents

An incident is defined as a single event that required the services of an MRT. The resolution of this incident may need several call-outs of a team (or teams) for example during a prolonged search.

In 2020, the total number of incidents was 497 and there were 671 callouts.

289 (58%) involved the sport of mountaineering.

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208 (42%) were non-mountaineering incidents.

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Contributing Factors

The most common contributing factor to mountaineering incidents was a slip or trip, which was a contributing factor in 96 mountaineering incidents, followed by navigation error 68 incidents and 49 lost persons.

Top 5 causes:

  1. Slip/trip – 96
  2. Navigation error – 68
  3. Lost persons – 49
  4. Missing Kit – 44
  5. Medical – 28
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Volunteers

Volunteers are the heart of Scottish Mountain Rescue. Our 25 Member Teams are made up entirely of volunteers (around 850 of them in total).

Mountain rescue volunteers gave up 24,401 hours of their time during call-outs.

It is not uncommon for a volunteer to give more than 100 hours to training per year.

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Between 850 volunteers that is over 85,000 hours on training every year.

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Injuries

36%

of the persons assisted in mountaineering incidents had an injury.

46%

of reported injuries involved a fracture.

The most common injury site was the ankle, followed by the lower leg.

Ankle: 28
Lower leg: 25
Knee: 8