Lees and the officer in charge of the team descended the moderately difficult Terminal Arête. The rocks streamed with water and were very cold. On the descent they met a well-known climber, Gilbert Peaker, escorting a man to the summit.

This was the survivor of the accident. He had been climbing Horned Crag when his leader slipped and fell about sixty feet. The rope held and he fell no farther, but subsequent examination showed that death was probably instantaneous.

Peaker and another man were descending a scree gully when tourists below the cliff (who had apparently witnessed the fall or seen the result) shouted and told them what had happened. The climbers returned to the summit, descended Terminal Arête and traversed down the face to the fallen leader. They secured the body and escorted the shocked second (who was a novice) to the top.

After passing Peaker, Lees continued to the site of the accident. He didn't want his team to come down the cliff with the stretcher, particularly as these ledges are strewn with loose rocks, so he decided to try to carry the dead man to the top himself. The body was about half-way down the cliff with the screes several hundred feet below.

By now six climbers had arrived by way of Horned Crag. Together they managed to tie the body on to Lee's back. There were nearly five hundred feet between him and the summit. At first he tried to carry the body, unaided but secured by two top ropes, one being kept tight to assist him up the initial problem: a vertical and slimy corner in the rock. He found this was impossible, for his load kept slipping so that he was unable to use his arms. Another strange factor of the operation was that one rescuer was deaf and another dumb. These two had been climbing together, communicating by tugs on the rope. Now everyone was tugging on ropes in the dark, complicating the situation immeasurably. Finally, by dint of carrying, dragging and lifting, they managed to get the corpse to the foot of Terminal Arête. This was wet and slimy and Lees was in vibrams. He decided to unrope as it was too awkward to have people safeguarding him as well as the body.

It had been dark for some time now and they were working by torchlight. As he was manhandling the body up a groove, leaning out backwards and with no security at all, he felt himself slipping. He clutched at the body, at the rocks, and tried desperately to slow himself by friction (for he was not yet in the air), but the groove was coated with slime. There was a sickening jar that shot from his ankles up his spine to his head; he swayed and leaned inwards - he had landed on the ledge at the bottom of the groove and had, miraculously, retained his balance. Had he toppled backwards he would have landed on the scree 700 feet below. Carefully, he started to climb the groove again. He was not afraid, only annoyed and wet and tired.

They reached the top at midnight. They had been on the cliff face in the dark for five and a half hours.

This kind of rescue, in the middle of a cliff, is not unusual. Accidents involving falls (whether to rock climbers or walkers who have ventured on a face) can be roughly divided into two categories; those in which the fall is to the bottom of the cliff where the body can be recovered with comparative ease, and those where the victim falls only partway, and is halted either by the rope, or pure luck (he lands perhaps on a ledge, and either through unconsciousness or common sense, doesn't move again). There is a third category where a walker is trapped, more
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