At the Factory Alasdair Grant was waiting with his ambulance. Alasdair, who doesn't climb, is a familiar and welcome sight to all rescuers on the Ben, for the sight of him, standing in the glaring floodlights of the factory yard, is always associated with the end of an operation. The two casualties were placed in the ambulance and some of us bundled in after them for the ride to town.

We were spilled out in the forecourt of the Belford where the reception committee waited: Mr Duff, a tiny bird of a man vibrating with concentration as the stretcher cam out; Matron, slight, hard and sharped-eyed, separating the wheat from the chaff. She gave a brief glance at the little procession bustling and squeaking along the corridor to the theatre, and pounced on me.

“You're very white; are you all right?“

“Tired,“ I spat, knowing further sympathy would make me weep.

“There's a cup of tea inside; come along.“

When I visited them later I heard the full story.
They had gone up to do Comb Gully, which is a hard turning out of Number Two Gully. Happily they were fairly low down in it when John, who was leading a small ice pitch and with eighty feet of rope out, came off. He was doubtful whether he was avalanched or he fell, but said that the conditions were highly suitable for avalanches after heavy rain the night before. All he could remember was trying to brake with his axe “through a sea of mushy snow“. He pulled out Peter's axe belay, and both fell and rolled about six hundred feet. John was wearing a thick woollen bonnet under his anorak hood which may have been instrumental in saving him from a fatal head injury.

Peter suffered from a stiff neck which was later found to be fractured. He had to wear a plastic collar and forgo an expedition to the Himalayas. It was eighteen months before he recoved completely.

In John's opinion there were two contributory causes to the accident. First, inexperience on the part of both concerning snow conditions on the Ben, and secondly, that a good climber should have proposed a hard route to a second possessing less experience. He also blamed himself for leading through. It is significant that the people who admit their inexperience and can analyse their mistakes after an accident are almost invariably more expert than those who say - or who have it said of them - that they have considerable experience.

At the time of this accident Peter had led climbs of a high grade in the Alps: Très Difficiles. If his party could come to grief, it is obvious that the only thing that saves inexperienced parties on the Ben and other Scottish mountains in winter, is the presence of good luck, not good judgement.

The hard work necessary to climb safely on snow which is only just adhering to snow-ice has been mentioned but not explained. Not only careful technical work is involved, but gruelling manual labour. If the new snow is deep, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches, a great pit, larger than a bucket has to be cleared, then the step cut in the usual way in the Continue to Page 7