BOLTON mountain rescue team volunteers have spearheaded a national training scheme for other lifesavers.

Three members of the group organised a special weekend course held at the University of Wales in Bangor which attracted delegates from all over the UK.

Bolton team member Jonathan Whiting co-organised the course -- designed to teach other MRT members search and rescue skills -- with input from his colleagues, Ann Shaw and Mike Marsh.

Team leader Garry Rhodes said: "It's a great honour for the Bolton team to be invited to support this course, particularly with an organiser and two instructors.

"It shows the standing the Bolton team has, with the national mountain rescue team community."

The national course is the latest indication of the growing respect that the town's volunteer team is held in.

Already the rescuers have been called out to 71 incidents this year, meaning the team is already close to beating 1999's 75 call-outs.

Those emergencies included 40 full-team callouts, where all the team is paged and required, which is more than in any other year.

This year's searches have included the desperate hunt for survivors of the Bolton moorland helicopter crash, which claimed three lives, and last month's fruitless search for David McHugh who drowned in Belmont's Blue Lagoon.

At the same time as the national course was staged, Bolton MRT training officer Chris Moody was also undergoing extra training on cliff rescues, climbing 400 feet stacks near Holyhead under the guidance of coastguards.

Mr Rhodes added: "The techniques learned and practised on this course are applicable to the occasional rope rescue we get involved in, so the course was valuable within our overall training."

Last weekend 10 team members travelled to the University of Lancaster for a special Millennium Mountain Rescue Annual Conference, with guest speakers from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the USA. Lotto bosses back computer plea LOTTERY bosses are set to boost a rescue team's coffers to help buy lifesaving electronic equipment.

Members of the Bolton Mountain Rescue team are currently on the hunt for £1,400 to pay for a new laptop computer which will complete a state-of-the-art tracking system for a new control vehicle.

And now chiefs from a local charity fund-raiser, the Big Chance Lottery, have given their backing to the scheme, pledging to allocate money from ticket sales to the computer purchase.

Charlie Harbourne, managing director of the lottery company, which has 42 terminals in the Bolton area, said: "As a non-profit making organisation, all the money raised via the sales of our lottery game is automatically ploughed back into the region where the money originated.

"By choosing this method, the people of Bolton will actually be able to take full responsibility for raising the money."

The new laptop computer will run the powerful tracking system which will allow volunteers to pinpoint the exact location of their emergency vehicles as well as send text messages between vehicles.

Last year the team were called out 75 times and this year alone they have been called out 60 times.

Just last week team members joined the search for David McHugh who tragically drowned in Belmont's Blue Lagoon.

Team member Garry Rhodes said: "This is fantastic news. This equipment will give the team greater communications ability and puts us at the forefront of emergency services technology.

"We're the only mountain rescue team in the UK to have vehicle tracking and soon we will have the system up and running."