For a distance of about two hundred feet the edge of the cliff here is a convex slope. From the top of it you can see nothing below. By the time this is possible you are too far down. Underneath are the cliffs of the North-East Buttress and, well over a thousand feet below, the floor of Coire Leis.

This convex slope is deep in snow in winter, snow which, receiving the direct rays of the sun, melts in the daytime and freezes again at night in the bitter frosts prevailing above four thousand feet. So, with alternate thaws and frosts, through more snow and rain, condensation and the prevailing south-west wind, a tough and dangerous dark ice forms, covering the whole of the great shoulder, sometimes broken by the fangs of boulders. But where the slope heels over into Coire Leis there are no boulders, and the slightest, seemingly most trivial slip may end over a thousand feet below. Crampons merely mark the surface of this ice, nails leave no mark at all, Vibrams are suicide.

Only two men have fallen here and lived. Even though they were supposed to have been saved by the great depth of snow in the corrie that year (there was only a fractured leg between them), it is difficult to believe, studying the line of all, that they were saved by anything short of a miracle.

Dan Stewart gives a harrowing account of his own experience on the slope:

“...We had kept too far left, even in clear conditions, and were kicking rapidly across a big hard snowfield of surprising convexity. Suddenly my Vibram edge failed to bite and I was on my side in a flash - my axe actually bouncing from my grasp. I grabbed it again and stopped, probably in less than ten feet but I'd had a fright, and scrambled away up the snow-slope to a point where I could safely walk left again... A thing which aggravates this treacherous trap is that in bad weather, when you can't see where you're going anyway and have your head down (and may even have started off in the right direction), the wind is almost invariably screaming in from a south westerly direction and pushes you leftward...“

In the winter of 1954, about the time that the Bristol student died on Bheinn Fhada, four young men were staying at Steall hut at the head of Glen Nevis. This was before the poles were erected.

They left the hut at 10.30 am on January 5th to ascend Ben Nevis. Below the summit, two of them, who had no experience, roped up, and as there was only one rope in the party, the others continued solo. Of these, one, Heron had done some hill-walking but as far as the leader, Hughes, knew, he had no experience on snow or rock. However, he had received some instruction on Continue to page 9