of the party: a cheerful extrovert, ingenious and as hard as nails.

On December 29th, 1951, this party of five travelled by train to Corrour Halt* on the West Highland Railway. The line, after crossing Rannoch Moor, skirts a wild and desolate region: the Forests of Rannoch and Corrour, and - to the north-east - Ben Alder Forest: great tracts of country which are not forests in the southern sense, but deer forests: high stretches of moorland, untracked and virtually uninhabited except where the occasional shooting box is occupied. Out of this waste of black peat bog rises the massif of Ben Alder.

It was their idea to walk from Corrour, along Loch Ossian and up the glen of the Uisge Labhair to the pass: Bealach Cumhann, which is a little over two thousand feet high. The pass lies at right angles to the Uisge Labhair and the distance from Corrour shooting lodge on Loch Ossian to the top is about four miles. About three miles down the other side is Ben Alder Cottage on the western shore of Loch Ericht. This was their objective.

They had intended to go no farther than Loch Ossian youth hostel on the first night, but when they left the train they were given a lift by a lorry driver who took them along the shore of Loch Ossian to Corrour Lodge at its foot. Since it was a fine night, they cooked themselves a meal of beans and soup by the lochside and then, at 8.30 p.m., they started up the glen towards the pass.

Snow was deep underfoot but although it was snowing again, this was only a light fall and the night could not be called a bad one as yet. It was reasonably calm. They were carrying a lot of food and a pressure cooker in addition to sleeping bags, stoves and personal equipment.

By the time they had covered two and a half miles in the deep snow, three of the party were tired and they decided to bivouac at an altitude of roughly 1,700 feet, at a point where a burn from the north-west, the Allt Glas Choire, joined the main stream, the Uisge Labhair, which they were following. They cleared some snow - some of the rescuers thought that they didn't clear enough; more work would have produced a better windbreak - but it is probable that they never dreamed they would need a better one. They slept well and comfortably.

From this bivouac Bradburn and Grieve pushed on to try to cross the pass alone, but they found the snow too soft and deep, and they, too, bivouacked after they had been going for an hour and a half. Continue to page 3

*Not to be confused with Corrour Bothy at the entrance to the Lairig Ghru, in the Cairngorms