and the three others were all killed, is not surprising, falling hundreds of feet down Zero Gully; but what strange sets of circumstances worked in opposition when one man fell the length of Green Gully and was killed, and his companion - falling with him, suffered only a broken ankle?

On January 28th 1962, the members of the RAF Winter Mountain Rescue course arrived at the CIC hut to find it occupied by a solitary climber, a member of the JMCS. He told them that the previous afternoon he had been climbing Green Gully when his friend (who was leading) had fallen from near the top. He remembered nothing more until he recovered consciousness in the dark and presumably some hours later. He was then below the foot of the gully, which is about five hundred feet long.

His leader was near by but he was dead. His own ankle was broken and he was suffering from head injuries, but he managed to drag himself down to the hut, where he kept himself alive on hot liquids until the RAF found him.

They must have fallen considerably farther than five hundred feet, for when the RAF went up to recover the body, it was lying some distance below the foot of the gully. This is explained by the fact that the gully proper starts at the head of a steep snow-slope. In all they must have fallen about eight hundred feet.

The state of mind of the survivor, recovering consciousness in darkness in this high corrie, must have been similar to that of a man reprieved from death but still under sentence. The intense shock of the fall, of finding his friend dead, of pain, cold and the knowledge that no one else was on the mountain, could have resulted in death for a man with less strength of will. These are the ultimate testing times of a man's character and, pondering this story and its implications, one wonders if some of those who died from exposure might have lived if, instead of waiting for death, they had gone crawling down the mountain to meet it - and shaken it off at the hut door. Continue to Chapter 11