The first accident that Easter happened to a girl and man descending the ice-covered track. They were adequately shod but carried no axes. The man slipped, fell, and was killed. The girl survived.

Almost at the same time another man, on the same patch of ice and without an axe, fell. He survived the fall and was eventually discovered by a Climbers' Club party, but he died soon after they reached him.

At 1.35 p.m. on March 24th the Valley team was called out to the first accident, and having gone half-way up Snowdon with two stretchers (acting on information that there were nine people involved), they were told that they were no longer needed. The survivor and the body had been evacuated by the Snowdon railway. The R.A.F. didn't know about the second accident. They descended the mountain to Llaberis and started back to their camp site in the next valley at 4.40 p.m.

At the top of the Llanberis Pass they were stopped and told to proceed to a third accident in Cwm Glaslyn - below the steep north face of Snowdon. There was a strong wind this day. A party of three climbers had fallen down one of the Trinity Gullies, the leader having been blown from his holds as he approached the top. They were belayed but only with the picks; it was too hard to get the shafts of the axes into the snow. When the leader fell, he took the second and third man with him. They fell five hundred feet. One man was killed and the others slightly injured.

By 9.00 p.m. the team had evacuated this body, and then the police asked them to bring down the solitary walker who was the second man to fall below the railway track on the Llanberis side. Mason, concerned about the fatigue of his men, and mindful of more accidents and more difficult rescues, asked if a civilian team could be organised and the railway used as an evacuation route. He wanted his men to have a hot meal; they had not eaten for over twelve hours.

At 3.00 a.m. he telephoned the civilian mountain rescue post at the Pen Y Gwryd Hotel and learnt that the walker had died at 7.30 p.m. the previous evening, and that a civilian party was bringing the body down.

That night twenty people sheltered in the hotel on the summit of Snowdon, unable or unwilling to descend. One applauds their prudence - in this event, at least - although if they were too inexperienced to descent, one wonders how they had the temerity to go up in the first place. Among them was yet another casualty: a man who had slipped on the ice sheet and injured his leg.

At 10.0 a.m. on the 25th, Chris Briggs of the Pen y Gwryd Hotel Continue to page 8