astonishing is their invariable reaction in abnormal conditions, in matters literally involving life and death, when sexual instinct gives place to the compulsion to survive.

It is known that a man is more likely to survive physical ordeals if he is trained to meet them beforehand. It is recognised that fear, and therefore panic, play a very large part in moral disintegration. It is a significant fact that girls who are completely inexperienced in mountain and weather conditions may survive without any previous training*. When a woman has seen a man she loves die, what is sustaining her when she goes on alone? Why is she going on when perhaps she would say, if she thought about it, she no longer wished to live? Sometimes the man who dies is only a friend. What sends the girl on into a world as unknown to her as space, when the natural reaction (one might think) would be to stay with the other who represents security because he is familiar even if no long alive? And if he is dead, who go on at all? Only a person who has experienced a blizzard at night knows the almost overwhelming compulsion to give in and lie down, for death then can be completely painless; only such a person knows the courage to go on. But if this is only courage, who don't the men go on?

Early on Sunday, April 10th, 1960, Jean MacBain and Nigel Milne left the girl's home at Lossiemouth to go mountaineering. They were said afterwards to be experienced hill-walkers but to have no knowledge of rock climbing or serious mountaineering. They left no word of where they intended to go.

When they hadn't returned by 1.0 am on the 11th, Jean MacBain's father informed the police. They told him that a woman at Glenmore youth hostel had reported a man missing, but it transpired that this was another party. A man had gone for a walk with his wife but they had parted company and she returned to the youth hostel. He had told her he would go up Ben Macdhui. When he failed to return, his wife reported him missing and RAF Kinloss were out at first light on the morning of April 11th, searching for him on the western slopes of Macdhui. At 1.0pm they were recalled to base by radio, the missing man having come in under his own steam. He had changed his mind about Macdhui and gone into Coire Etchachan instead, spending the night at the Shelter Stone

*I should make it clear that I am not advocating that untrained girls should go into the hills because they stand a very good chance of survival. I am saying that they stand a very good chance of surviving their male companions. Of course, experienced women mountaineers stand a far better chance of survival than the feminine novice - Author
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