or less uninjured, on a precipitous face where he should never have been in the first place.

The latter are the people who make the biggest mistakes in judgement. They have misjudged the terrain, conditions underfoot (such as snow), weather, time, and their own capacity in an emergency for coping with any of these. Perhaps they have not recognised that such problems exist. Innumerable examples can be called to mind of people being rescued from ledges; like sheep they have descended, and like sheep they cannot, or dare not, retreat. A schoolmaster with his boys has been rescued alive from a ledge on the Devil's Kitchen cliffs, a couple from a ledge on the Aonach Eagach, from the west face of Tryfan, from Great Gable, Sgurr Alasdair and Kinder Scout; almost every cliff in the country has at least one ledge where beleaguered victims have waited miserably for quiet, gentle men who come smoothly down the cliff like animals coming home.

By 1952 the R.A.F. had conceded that one of the basic qualifications for team members was a knowledge of rock climbing. The team was trained by the nucleus, and a representative number profited from the summer rock climbing course. The nucleus itself might be trained by the officer or N.C.O. in charge of the team. Valley was lucky in that they had a man who had been leading Very Severes competently for some time, and who could instruct. (Not all tigers are capable of instruction.) When he had been with the team for eight months, Lees had members who could follow severe climbs competently. It must be remembered that the team was in a permanent state of flux: old members being demobilised, new and inexperienced men coming in. The men who were following Severes in August might not have been with the team in January.

Many men when they came to the team were experienced - on paper. Reading the application forms, Lees would hope he had a man already trained in mountaineering, if not in rescue work. A man would profess to have climbed extensively in the Lake District and Skye (he noted that they would mention distant centres of which they expected him to know nothing).

"What have you done in the Lake District?"
"I've climbed all over."
"Where?"
"All over."
"Have you climbed in Langdale?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"I've climbed Harrison Stickle and Pavey Ark."
It was a typical conversation with which all guides and instructors must be familiar. The expert knows, at the first vague answer, what he is dealing with. An experienced person, being interviewed, knows what is wanted. He will enumerate the centres from which he has climbed and mention some of the hardest or finest climbs he has done in each. A man worth his salt will say when he has seconded a climb but not when he led it. Only very good climbers and poor ones omit to say whether they led. The poor man wants to imply that he leads everything, and the good man doesn't consider he has done a climb unless he led it.

Most of Lees' applicants, if they professed experience, were still at the stage where walking up a mountain was termed 'climbing'. However, if they had done some fell walking they had the basic necessities. A more dangerous attitude was that of the type of applicant who said he had led some Very Difficult and was now competent to lead Severes. Continue to Page 9