were very similar to those prevailing during the previous accident: muggy, soggy, rain in the valley, sleet and snow above - ripe for a wet-snow avalanche. But in each case it was reported that the cornice fell on the climbers, precipitating the available.

These reports led some people to ignore another factor of the situation. This was the shape of the gully. At the top it is funnel-shaped, and during a thaw a great mass of water-logged snow is dammed up by the narrows at the base of the funnel. The arrival of a large party of climbers ploughing up into the bowl from the steep however gully will be enough to set the whole mass moving and, without its support, the cornice comes down in its turn. The avalanche precipitates the collapse of the cornice, not the reverse.

From survivors' statements it is usually possible to reconstruct the circumstances of an accident, particularly if the rescuer, through the nature of his work, is required to investigate the cause, or to confirm the statements of others. But there have been many occasions when there were no survivors to make statements, and the weather so bad or the search for victims so protracted that by the time the accident site was known all traces had been erased. The cause - and sometimes the exact location - of such accidents remains a mystery.

This kind of atmosphere has always surrounded an accident involving two climbers on Ben Nevis in 1953. Both men had considerable experience; they were members of the Climbers' Club and had climbed extensively at home and abroad.

They left the CIC hut at the foot of the north-east face at 10.30 am intending to do South Castle Gully on Carn Dearg. The weather was bad throughout the day, deteriorating steadily with heavy falls of snow and strong gusts of wind. No one else left the hut.

When the two climbers hadn't returned at 9.0 pm, some of the other occupants of the hut went to the foot of South Castle Gully and flashed their torches up the cliff, but there was no response.

At seven o'clock next morning they were still missing and three people went down to Fort William to report the disappearance to the police.

Accounts of the subsequent search vary in small details. It seems likely that neither of the two important gullies (North and South Castle) was climbed throughout on the first day of the search. The police report says that four people ascended South Castle to the top of the first pitch and thought that they could distinguish where a recent step had been cut. They continued for another hundred feet until they could see practically the full extent of the gully, but there was no sign of human occupants. They looked up North Castle from its foot with the same result.

It was reported that none of the cornices at the tops of Numbers Four and Five Gullies, nor the Castle Gullies, was broken, which implied that no one had left or descended them.

The west face of Carn Dearg was searched but no traces were found, although a climber might be expected to descend here by way of a short cut to the glen, if he had rejected the still shorter route to the hut by way of the face itself.

On the second day Kinloss climbed North and South Castle Gullies. Two team Continue to Page 3