harder layer underneath. This has to be done literally at every step. Failure to do so could mean the whole slope peeling off, precipitated by the collapse of one step. Shaft belays for the axe, piton belays if the underlying stratum is ice, are obtained in the same manner. The new snow must be completely ignored as any form of security at all and the shaft or piton sunk in the snow or ice beneath. When the cornice is reached, similar conditions may prevail, and literally hundredweights of new snow may have to be flogged down before the firm base is reached in which finishing holds may be cut with safety and used without fear of collapse.

In conditions such as these Lees and I were spending a leave on Ben Nevis in March 1959. One Sunday morning we were having breakfast alone in the hut when five sailors arrived from Lossiemouth. They were followed by Hamish MacInnes, his wife and two RAF men, these three men with their eyes on a hard climb on the North-East Buttress.

At 10.0am Lees and I went up into Coire na Ciste, looking for a feasible route in the prevailing conditions. We noticed that two of the sailors were in Number Five Gully, and the other three were approaching the foot of Number Two. This last is technically the hardest of the numbered gullies, being the steepest, and having a small ice pitch in most winters. Another potential danger lies in its shape. Before the pitch it bends, so that anyone falling from above will strike the rock wall instead of falling clear to the bottom.

We had been thinking vaguely of doing this route, but rather than follow in the steps of the naval party, we decided on Raeburn's Easy Route: a long, diagonal line which traverses the cliff from left to right between Glover's Chimney and Number Two Gully.

It was a good day with a bitterly cold wind and the tops clear. But conditions underfoot were bad; on the 120-foot ice pitch which started Raeburn's there was rotten snow on very tough ice. I disliked this intensely, and we both treated it with extreme caution.

At the top of the next pitch we came out on the great sloping shelf which we were to follow to the top of the cliff, but although the ice pitch was to prove the only section with any technical difficulty, there was no question of relaxing once it was over. For the rest of the climb there were about two feet of new snow on top of snow-ice.

For a hundred feet or so we carefully cleaned out pits in the new stuff and cut steps in the snow-ice underneath. Below us the cliff dropped away into Coire na Ciste. In summer we would walk here with our hands in our pockets. Today it required constant vigilance and several minutes of hard work for every foot of progress.

Of course we were moving one at a time, and securely belayed. As I came up to Lees after two pitches, he said that he could hear a whistle. He said it in a flat, emotionless voice which defied contradiction, and I went past him grumbling sullenly, for I knew that now we were committed to work infinitely harder and more dangerous, and for a moment distaste was stronger than compassion. Besides, I hadn't heard the whistle. Then I heard it, distant, muffled and unmistakable, and every other reaction was swamped by the crying need for speed.

The sound came from Number Two Gully which was now below us on our right.

The edge of the summit plateau was much farther away than it appeared, and trying to Continue to Page 8