“...I have only descended once from the Carn Mor Dearg arête ... I remember finding it steeper and trickier than expected and was glad to get off.... I would hazard a guess that the terrain is fairly similar all the way round the cirque [Coire Leis] and that conditions, e.g. verglas, black ice, hard snow, no axe, etc., are responsible for most accidents [here]“.

In February 1958 when conditions were very hard on the Ben, and only a few days after I had descended this slope roped and cutting steps and astonished at the toughness of the ice, a party of students from Glasgow University came glissading down the same slope unroped. A girl lost control and, in trying to stop her, the leader of the party went down as well. They fell three hundred feet - over snow through which boulders were projecting. The girl died of head injuries. The man was a stretcher case with severe bruising.

Nine days later one of the Excise officers from Fort William, wearing Tricouni nails but unroped, slipped in the same place and, unable to brake with the pick, fell five hundred feet into the corrie. It took his companion an hour to climb down to him. The accident occurred between five and six in the evening. By the time the stretcher reached him at nine o'clock he was dead. The rescue party had considerable difficulty descending the icy slopes in the dark. One member fell a hundred feet and was slightly injured.

A little over two weeks later two men of Oxford University Mountaineering Club had climbed Observatory Ridge and were descending into Coire Leis. At 6.20 p.m. one, Derek Hill, slipped and fell two hundred and fifty feet. Surprisingly, he didn't seem to be badly injured; there was a cut above his eye, but when he was helped to his feet he complained of a severe pain in the groin, and he was unable to stand without support.

His companion left him and ran down to the hut for help. He found four climbers there, sent one down to Fort William for a rescue party, and himself went back with the others into Coire Leis. They searched for Hill through drifting snow and a high wind but they were unable to locate him. At 11.00 p.m. they returned to the hut. The civilian team arrived from Fort William and just after midnight a second search party went out but they, too, were unable to find the missing man, and they returned at 4.00am.

At 5.30 am they tried again. They were hampered by the gale and very bad visibility as the cloud was down - also the survivor didn't know the corrie.

Kinloss arrived and mounted a sweep search. Hill was found at 12.50p.m. Continue to page 7