Welcome to Mountain Aid

Mountaineering Incidents – a talk by Bob Sharp, co-author of Mountain Rescue (the history of Mountain Rescue) and former Lomond Mountain Rescue Team Leader

The above talk on ‘Mountaineering Incidents’ by Bob Sharp, former Lomond Mountain Rescue Team leader and co-author of Mountain Rescue, an exceptionally well illustrated (both photographically and anectdotally), history of Mountain Rescue. Bob, a former Ben Lomond Mountain Rescue Team Leader, was involved in Mountain Rescue for around 30 years and took part in more than 250 call-outs, will base his talk on the one given at the Mountain Safety Day exhibition at Stirling in October past where it was very well received. If you are a hillgoer then you are sure to enjoy Bob’s entertaining and informative presentation. Entry is open to all and is FREE - and the Rugby Club bar will be open.

All hillgoers (and would be hillgoers) are welcome to this event, which is brought to you by Mountain Aid, the Scottish Mountain Safety charity, who will be holding their AGM immediately preceding Bob’s talk. You are equally welcome to join in the Mountain Aid AGM. With nothing controversial on a very short agenda, the plan is to get through this by 8 pm. Regardless, Bob’s talk will begin at 8 pm (if need be the AGM business will be resumed and completed at the end of the talk).

Mountain Aid aims are threefold, to help injured hillgoers, to support Mountain Rescue Services and to promote mountain safety initiatives. If you feel you can help in any way please talk to any of the Mountain Aid team at the talk, or 'Contact Us' via this web-site.

Thanks – and we hope to see you at Stirling County Rugby club on the 30^th May.

This year’s Mountain Aid AGM will be held in Stirling County Rugby Club on Wednesday May30th at 7.30 pm. The agenda is as follows:-

1. Present

2. Apologies

3. Approval of minutes of 2011 AGM

4. Election of Office Bearers

5. Chairman’s report

6. Treasurer’s report

7. Date, time and place of next AGM

We are planning to complete all AGM business by 8pm when our guest speaker, Bob Sharp, will give a talk on Mountain Incidents (see previous entry).

Our accounts for year-end 2012, which ended 31st March, have been audited and forwarded to OSCR. However OSCR are in the process or changing internal systems and have asked us to hold off until early June before resubmitting the accounts electronically. So despite our efforts to get them audited within a week of the year-end, we're now having to wait a few months before they are processed.

We have just learned that Davy Pearson has sadly passed away. Those of you who have been active hillwalkers for many years may recall that Davy Pearson had an accident on the Etive Slabs in July 1986. Although a climber, Davy was actually just photographing other climbers and was not intending to go climbing himself. Davy suffered severe head injuries in the accident and was airlifted to hospital.

It was Davy's accident that triggered Gordon Pierson into starting Boots Across Scotland. Gordon intended to raise funds to help Davy, but the fundraising event was so successful that "Boots" was born.

Mountain Aid is run by some of the people who were involved with "Boots" many years ago, and we know that many people who support us were also "Boots" supporters in the 80s and 90s. As Mountain Aid has the same goals as Boots did, and is run by some of the ex Boots committee, we felt it appropriate to report on Davy's passing on our website.

As an open and honest organisation, we would like to advise our supporters that we have received an official complaint regarding Mountain Aid and its operation. This complaint, made formally to ourselves and OSCR, was made by Mr Gordon Pierson, a former Trustee of the now-defunct Boots Across Scotland. Many of the current Mountain Aid committee members were committee members of "Boots" during its successful years, but left as the charity began to implode.

When we received the complaint, we notified OSCR ourselves as we wanted to remain transparent to all. We have nothing to hide.

Mr Pierson’s complaint alleges that we are claiming that "Mountain Aid is the new Boots". However as all our supporters will appreciate, we have never claimed to be the "new Boots". We established Mountain Aid, starting out with no money and no supporters, when it was obvious that "Boots" was in terminal decline.

It came as no surprise to us that OSCR have dismissed the complaint, and they have passed it back to ourselves to handle as an internal matter. We have repeated an earlier offer made to Mr Pierson to discuss his concerns, however he has made it clear to us that he “may try to contact Boots supporters to alert them to the matter”. As an open and honest organisation, we want to keep our supporters informed of the true facts.

The committee members and trustees of Mountain Aid are extremely proud of the work we are doing in promoting mountain safety. We will endeavour to continue this hard work through the dedication of our committee of volunteers.

Finally, if you were a Boots Across Scotland supporter, Mountain Aid would be delighted to hear from you!

Thank you to everyone who came along to Stirling yesterday for our Mountain Safety Day. It was a wet and miserable October day outside, but inside and outside we had a whole host of outdoor organisations and well-known "outdoor personalities", and we hope that everyone who came along found the day to be worthwhile.

As always we value feedback, so if you have any comments - good or bad - about the day then please get in touch. It cost us a lot of money to host the event, so we need to be sure it's good value for money.

Cameron McNeish very kindly drew the raffle winners at the end of the event. As expected most of the winners had already left, but we will be in touch with all the winners.

Thank you also to those of you who have submitted entries into our challenging quizzes, we will be selecting winners from the correct entries at the end of the week.

Thank you once again for helping to make the day as successful as we think it was - please let us know if you agree with us!

From everyone at Mountain Aid.