In the case of the Castle accident one assumes that the climbers were involved in an avalanche, and it is more likely that they precipitated it than that it fell on them. But without survivors, nothing is certain. An accident which may have had a very similar origin to the last, occurred less than a year later in another gully on Ben Nevis.

The climbers involved were Peter Rack and John Heap. Rack, a London surgeon, was an experienced alpinist and member of the Alpine Climbing Group; Heap had less experience. At the time of their accident Dan Stewart was the officer in charge at Kinloss and Lees was the NCO. I was living in Fort William and had made arrangements to climb with John Berkeley, the local doctor, one Sunday in January. Lees was to join us if he could, but on the Saturday night it transpired that the training programme was too full for him to be spared; in fact, John and I were asked to help out as instructors. I had been looking forward to something good this weekend, but the weather had been poor all week; there had been heavy snow and now it was mild, the Ben wasn't suitable for hard climbing. So John and I agreed to join the team.

Sunday morning found the two of us tramping up a water-logged glen where the low snowdrifts were as soggy as wet kapok and the cloud was down to the foot of the gullies. It wasn't a day for climbing at all, but one for the Sunday papers and a cheerful fire.

Rack and Heap were in a small tent outside the CIC hut, and after a few words I forgot them as Dan arrived to brief us on our routes.

Some time later I was moving up into Coire na Ciste with my party of novices, bound for Number Three Gully. Soon after we passed the cloud-line I began to stumble in avalanche debris. I thought the situation over carefully (I hadn't done a great deal of winter climbing then; nowadays it would need less thought) and decided not to do the gully. We moved away from its foot and I started teaching my party how to fall and stop on steep snow. Voices away up on my left, and shouts, not of alarm, told me that John was doing the same thing at the foot of Number Four. It transpired that all four leaders were practising falling and stopping below their respective gullies.

This went on for some time: sliding, scraping, shouting in the mist. We were having quite a good time - all warm and jolly - when suddenly we heard a whistle.

We froze like rabbits on the snow-slope, glaring at the ones who still moved. We couldn't believe it. But there was no doubt about it. The blasts sounded tinny and lost in the cloud-filled corrie. They came from the direction of Number Two Gully, where Lees was - and at that time I didn't know that he wasn't climbing it, nor did I have the confidence in him which I was forced to acquire in ensuing years. Fear made me clumsy as I plunged and seated after the men, and the nightmarish quality persisted as I pulled up short to stare at the colourless, bulky shapes of men moving about in the mist - not my own party who were moving fast beside me - but Lees' men. It was another sense than sight which identified his silhouette, although he was bigger than most and always wore a red beret and long white socks, but conventional recognition was slower. Reactions were quick: there was the familiar one of security regained which came with recognition, then a twinge of guilt (if he were all right, who wasn't?) and then my mind shook itself as I re-focused on the same situation which had obsessed me since I first heard the whistle, but with a different man involved. One said sternly that this man mattered just as much and - in the ensuing hours - managed to convince oneself of the fact. \it is only in retrospect one acknowledges the source of fear and
Continue to Page 5