Another shot from the top of Morrone on Wednesday. The small hut behind hubby is the original radio hut erected in late 1966. Dad took a week's holiday that summer to build the wooden sections and it was transported to the top of the mountain and completed with brickwork and concrete flooring later in the year. The first serious use of the hut was in April 1967, when the MR team were called out to look for a lost hiker, Brian M. Goring. Sadly he was not found alive, and his body was recovered from the Garbh Coire of Braeriach in June of that year. His devastated, but grateful parents collected money to present to the MR association, which was equal to what had been spent on the erection of the radio hut. The hut was therefore named after the lost hiker, and officially opened by his parents later that year. There is a bronze plaque on the front of the hut in his memory. Up until the erection of the first radio mast on Morrone, a member of the Braemar MR team would be dispatched to this hut to operate the radio from there (as it allowed radio contact for all of the surrounding Cairngorms). He would be there for the duration of the rescue and a rudimentary bed was in the hut in case an overnight stay was essential. Fortunately this manning of the radio station is no longer necessary!
Gracious that’s so interesting....poor man but he lives on in this vital building. That is a very cold looking place, thick ice & I can imagine what it would look like in a roaring gale, you wouldn’t see a thing! Your dad must be very proud to have been involved in this project & you for his input!
What an informative narrative... and so fitting that it was named in remembrance of the lost hiker. A fitting capture of this historic building, which I’m sure your dad will take pleasure viewing too.
Good shot- so am I understanding this correctly- your dad worked on this one? Sad story about the hiker- but it sounds like some good came out of the sorrow in establishing this place for communications.
@olivetreeann Yes, at the beginning of dad's Mountain Rescue days in the 60s, one of the biggest problems they had was lack of radio contact when out on a rescue - putting the rescuing teams in danger and making their work less effective. Over 2-3 years they completed a project which was 1) to build a hut to house the radio set (and the operator) during a rescue and 2) to build a mast which would mean that there was no longer a need for an operator to sit in the hut as the radio could be remotely operated. Hard graft when everything has to be transported to the top of a hill. They also had to build the road, so that landrovers could get to the top, and run all the necessary cables for miles. A huge job, but one that paid off over the years, and still does, although many things have since been upgraded.
