very few novices can have distinguished themselves so highly on their first rescue as did these three. It was still light when we reached the hut. The rest of the Lossiemouth contingent arrived soon after us, bringing their own medical officer. He decided to remove our casualty and the second survivor to Fort William that night. The second man had a compressed fracture of the spine.

Very shortly the Fort William mountain rescue team arrived in their turn, accompanied by the police. There were now about forty people in the hut. I sat on my bunk, blinking benignly at these hordes, and made tea and proffered our milk and sugar, accepting with gratitude the sandwiches Bobby Corson's mum had made for him to eat on the hill, for of course there was no room for anyone to cook supper, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.

Bobby was a member of the civilian team and we had climbed together when I used to live in the Fort. I was in the middle of telling him about the accident when I heard raised voices, and turned in surprise to see Lees, coldly angry, arguing with a large policeman. I heard him refuse to carry the stretcher down. I grinned and continued pouring tea. Had I thought further about the matter than I would have assumed that, on learning the facts, the policeman would apologise. But, sadly, this was not the case - and no one thanked us for our tea.

We didn't sleep well that night and the following day was windy and cold with low cloud. Suffering from reaction and staleness (we had been climbing hard every day on the Ben for a week in poor conditions) we had a short day on Castle Ridge. Next day we descended to the Fort, taking with us more equipment which had been recoved from Number Two Gully by the Mountaineering Association instructor, Ian Clough. We delivered this to our friends in the Belford.

They were cheerful and touchingly grateful. The Dislocated Hip showed us the newspapers.

“This isn't your accident,“ I said. But it was.
We learnt that he had been rescued by a hiker who had heard the whistles and run down the face to the injured man ....“ I never came down a mountain so fast.“

“I can think of circumstances under which he could come down faster,“ I said, and continued reading: of the police party which had led the searchers up the mountain by torchlight to find the two injured men huddled in a foxhole built by the hiker. There was even a photograph of the 'rescuer'. We looked at it curiously.

We did not ask for thanks but we were surprised we received none from the authorities concerned.

The most important point about this accident was its cause. The following day we descended Number Two Gully. The traces of the fall were still plainly visible and we could see that when the leader fell off the cornice, his second and third men were belayed well below and separately. He should have had both of them as high as possible under the cornice so that he would have gathered little momentum by the time they came to take the strain. The cornice hadn't collapsed but the axe had sliced through the rotten snow like butter. When we came to descend we had to clear away great quantities of this before we reached the firm snow-ice underneath in which we could cut steps and belay. Continue to Page 12