They had little idea in which direction they were going. At 6.0 p.m. they started making their way up a gully to the north of the Shelter Stone, and they came out on the plateau at 4,000 feet in complete darkness and a howling gale. At the start of this expedition they possessed a compass and a map, but they lost the map. They may have had a torch originally but they had none at the end.

They wandered about the plateau all night without bivouacking. When a daylight came they were above the cliffs between Cairn Lochain and Stob Coire an t-Sneachda. By this time one man was in a bad way and an attempt was made to lower him into one of the northern corries. The rope slipped from any icy block and the weakened man and one of the lowerers fell two hundred feet down rock, snow and icy slopes. It is probable that they fell down the Vent of Coire an Lochain.

The two pairs lost contact with each other, the men on top under the impression that the others were lying injured or dead below the cliffs. The two men who had not fallen descended carefully into Coire an t-Sneachda and followed a burn down the corrie until they came to a tent occupied by three skiers. By now they had been on the move in bad weather for over twenty hours. One had strained his groin and, while he stayed in the tent in the care of one of the occupants, the others started down with the fourth member of the party.

Very shortly this man collapsed and one of the skiers went on to Loch Morlich youth hostel to raise the alarm. By this time it was dark. A search party went out from the youth hostel and brought in the fourth man.

Five instructors from Glenmore Lodge, led by one Jimmy Hutchinson, and thirteen other civilians started from the ski-road car park about eleven o'clock and reached the skiers' tent about midnight, the waist-deep snow making progress very difficult. They found that the third survivor, now resting in the tent, was quite coherent. He appeared to be the leader and was the only man in the original party in possession of an ice axe. At first it had been thought that the others had fallen in Coire an t-Sneachda, whereas the man in the tent said they had gone over into Coire an Lochain, and that he had heard their voices later on the lower part of the Fiacaill Ridge.

The search party split into two, each half taking one of the two corries. They arranged to communicate with Very lights.

The first victim (the one who had been the first to weaken on the plateau) Continue to page 19