History
Prior to the early 1970s, mountain rescue incidents were dealt with on an ad-hoc basis making best use of local officers and volunteers with appropriate skills.
One of the first recorded mountain incidents occurred on 1st January 1959 when a group of 5 men were reported overdue whilst walking between Braemar and Glendoll. A search involving officers and members of local climbing clubs failed to trace the males alive and the last of the bodies were not recovered until April when the winter snow receded.
By the early 1970s, as more people took to the hills for recreation it was apparent that a more structured approach was required to deal with the increase in incidents.
In 1973, Angus Constabulary (now Eastern Division of Tayside Police) identified a group of officers with the necessary skills and formed them into a mountain rescue team, affiliated to the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland. That same year the team conducted its first technical rescue from the upper part of Look C Gully in Corrie Fee, under full winter conditions.
Following regionalisation and the formation of Tayside Police in 1975, additional officers from Dundee and Perth joined the group to form the Tayside Police Mountain Rescue Team. These officers were all suitably equipped and received regular training.
Up to this point the police had received assistance from civilian volunteers on an ad-hoc basis. Following an incident in the winter of 1976 where a young couple died, some forward looking individuals from local climbing clubs formed the Tayside Mountain Rescue Association (TMRA) and Tayside Mountain Rescue Team (TMRT).
Both TMRT and the police team are joint members of the association, working and training together to ensure there is a robust response to mountain rescue incidents in Tayside.
By the mid 1980s, the Police team was regularly being called to co-ordinate both low and high ground searches. In order to reflect this greater use of mountain rescue skills the name was changed to the Tayside Police Search and Rescue Unit.
