Galloway MRT members travelled over to Moffat at the end of October for a joint exercise. The Saturday scenario involved searching for a group of missing extreme mountain bikers. Unfortunately the helicopter was not available which meant a long journey by road round to the Ettrick Valley where a group found two of the casualties in the late afternoon. Other team members searched closer to Moffat.

The SARCOM vehicle had travelled down from Inverness but due to complications with the GPS and local repeaters communications proved very difficult which gave folks at base a bit of a headache as well as those on the hill!

The excellent Moffat hospitality was enjoyed on Saturday night which included a talk from ARCC (Kinloss) staff.

Sunday was WET! Not long after teams deployed the heavens opened and, with very strong winds, the streams and rivers very quickly rose and became too dangerous to cross.

One casualty was located in a bothy on the other side of the Gameshope Burn from the search party and it took three hours for the burn to fall enough to allow a safe rescue. However the new clothing kit proved to be excellent! The exercise was rightly called off at 1230 for safety reasons but the day didn't end till 1730 when all arrived back at Moffat.

As ever the joint exercise raised questions, gave opportunities for sharing ideas and working together. Many thanks to everyone at Moffat for the weekend but not the weather!