Below the ice pitch the gully curved. They had shot over the pitch and the line of fall went straight into the wall, came off, and continued down the gully. It was this impact that must have done the damage. I reflected that had heads been the first things to hit the wall we would not have carried one living man down to the hut but three bodies.

The number of reports on the last accident amounted to an embarras de richesse; there is no mystery. The strangest accidents can be those in which there are no survivors or one survivor who is unable to remember. About such accidents, whatever may be deduced by subsequent investigation, there remains an air of mystery. Why did the leader slip? Who owned the brokex axe, and was it broken in its passage down the cliff, or did it break when in use as a belay? The fantastic series of events which may occur between the original slip and death or escape will be appreciated by those who have read Barker's The Last Blue Mountain or Gos's Alpine Tragedy. The story of the fall on Haramosh in the former must be the most heartbreaking story of a mountain accident ever published.

On Nevis everything is on a smaller scale, even time - although it is doubtful if the victims are aware of that. On Haromosh there was no mystery, for two survived. Sometimes there are no survivors.

In April 1958 a party of three who were said to be experienced alpinists were camping in Glen Nevis. On the morning of April 9th they left the glen at 5.30 am telling the wife of one of their number, in fun, not to call out the mountain rescue for two days.

They didn't return that night and, at 9.30 am on the 10th, the wife asked the advice of the warden at Glen Nevis youth hostel. This is a typical reaction to the non-appearance of a climbing husband. Some wives are placid, some neurotic. All have to posses a sense of proportion to preserve their sanity. On occasions they are afraid that they are losing their sense of proportion and the intelligent ones ask advice.

The youth hostel warden discussed the affair with the girl and they decided to do nothing until the afternoon, for there was a possibility that the missing men might have spent the night at the CIC hut and that they were staying up to climb this second day since the weather was good. But when they hadn't returned by 7.30 pm, the police were informed.

At 10.0 pm they were officially presumed missing and the RAF were called in. The wife could give no indication of their whereabouts.

Kinloss left the valley at 5.0am on April 11th. At 1.0pm the bodies were found, roped together, at the foot of Zero Gully; one of the hardest gullies on the Ben.

Although at the time it was thought that they had fallen from the easier Observatory Ridge, Hamish MacInnes was to establish that they had been in the gully when they fell. He found pieces of their broken axes high up in it. One axe was receoved undamaged but with the wrist sling broken.

MacInnes considered the belays they had been using were unsound technique for ice climbing. The police said that conditions at the time were completely unsuited for the climb, despite the experience of the party. (Zero Gully had been climbed only once in winter prior to this attempt.) Again, no one knows for certain what happened, but from the evidence of Continue to Page 13