This weekend is our National Mountain and Cave Rescue Awareness Weekend, and to mark such here are some facts and figures on the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team:

• We are on call 24 / 7 whatever the weather, snow, storm, rain, wind or sunshine ! Day or night.
• We currently have forty three Call Out List members, five ‘Reserve Call Out list members, and fourteen Support Group members, a grand total of sixty two Team members.
• Our operational membership includes two Doctors, two A&E Nurses, one ICU Nurse, a serving GMP Police Inspector, a Retired GMP Police Inspector, two GMFRS Firefighters, and a former member of the NCB Mines Rescue Unit.
• The age range of our operational membership varies from our youngest member in her early twenties to our oldest member in his seventh decade.
• Our longest serving member is Alan James (One of our Honorary Vice Presidents) who was a Founder member of the Team in 1968, aged 18, and still attends Call Outs nowadays.
• We have seven women amongst our operational membership.
• We currently have four specialist built Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles, one Ford Transit Minibus Ambulance and an Incident Control Vehicle in team service.
• We currently have three trailers in team service; consisting of a Catering Unit, our SAR boat trailer and a trailer containing our two AerShelta Inflatable Shelter tents
• We currently have one 3.5m semi rigid inflatable SAR Boat.
• We operate out of garage premises at GMFRS Bolton Central Fire Station, at GMFRS Bolton North Fire Station (Thanks for both to GMFRS) and garage and our Base / HQ premises at Ladybridge Hall, Chorley New Road, Bolton. (Courtesy of NWAS)
• We have 1,893 Twitter ‘Followers.’
• We have 570 Facebook ‘Followers.’
• We have attended to date this year 47 Operational Incidents.
• As a full team we have taken part in six ‘Lowland’ searches so far this year.  (and been stood down responding on a further three searches)
• Rescues this year to date have included nine walkers, two Mountain Bikers, two Cross Country Runners, two climbers and one Horse Rider.
• Of our 47 Incidents, five of these have just involved our Mountain Rescue Trailing Dog.
• NWAS has called us out 27 times so far this year.
• Our busiest day so far this year was Good Friday, when we attended three Call Outs.
• We have provided ‘Standby Rescue Cover’ for seven events so far this year.
• ‘Briefly Yours’ the teams in-house member only circulation A4 format news-sheet, carrying details of team activities, policy, procedures, gossip, debriefs on incidents and general chit chat, which is copied to every team member is now on Issue 79 this year! (So much to record and pass on to our membership)
• We have one operational Mountain Rescue Search Dog in the team, Search Dog Boris (With his handler Steve Nelson) who is a specialist ‘Trailing Dog.’ (Steve is a member of SARDA Wales)
• We have one Mountain Rescue Drowned Victim Search Dog, Sasha, currently in training (With her handler, and former SARDA Air Scenting dog handler Dave Marsh) – who should be graded for operational incidents in mid Summer 2014.
• We currently have one potential Mountain Rescue ‘Air Scenting’ Search Dog in training with SARDA England, Bella (With her handler Paul Chisholm) – who should be graded for operational incidents in 2015.
• We have an integral water search and rescue capability within the team, including five Bankside First Responders, three Rescue 3 Swiftwater First Responders, and two Rescue 3 Swiftwater Rescue Technicians.
• The team has over 120 Collection boxes in various locations throughout the local community the team serves.