The team was set up in 1976 following an incident on a local estate with a missing worker. As a result, a number of interested locals decided to try and set up some robust arrangements for search and rescue in the north. A meeting was called by the local policeman and with the help of some homebrew, the idea of a local MRT based in Assynt took root.

Today Assynt Mountain Rescue Team works with the Police Scotland, Scottish Ambulance Service, H.M. Coastguard and other agencies in Sutherland and Caithness, volunteering to provide search and rescue support. The team is available to be called out any time, any day, and in any type of weather. All our volunteers share a love of hillwalking and being in the outdoors with many members also being keen mountaineers, rock climbers, snow and ice-climbers and cavers.

We work out of two bases – our main rescue post is at Inchnadamph, where our team Landrover is based and our Sprinter Ambulance is based in Thurso.

We currently have around 35 volunteer members, some of whom have search dogs and are part of the Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA). All of our team members are trained in advanced first aid and a high percentage are Remote Rescue Medical Technician (RRMT) qualified members who are able to prescribe drugs to casualties in a mountain rescue environment. We also have qualified Drone Pilots and many team members have mountaineering qualifications such as MCI, Summer or Winter Mountain Leader and Single Pitch Award. We train as a team a minimum of once monthly and our members regularly attend Scottish Mountain Rescue’s national training courses.

Assynt Mountain Rescue covers many popular hills in Sutherland and Caithness, from Suilven, Cul Mor and Ben Mor Assynt, north to Ben Klibreck, Ben Hope and Ben Loyal. Although many of the mountains are not Munros, they are often remote, steep and technically challenging. There is also the isolated peninsula of Cape Wrath and sea stacks such as Old Man of Stoer.

We are entirely reliant on voluntary support, public funding and charitable donations to provide this service.