Campion. He said he had been within shouting distance of the party, but he couldn't reach them without a rope. It was he who had advised the police to call in the team.

At 3.0 a.m., belayed by Bray and Campion, Lees reaches the stranded party. These were intelligent people, not liable to panic, and they cheered up considerably with the arrival of the ropes and rescuers. The injured girl was tied on and, with a tight rope from above and a steadying hand from Lees, she managed to climb one-handed to Bray and Campion. The rest of the party needed no more encouragement and they followed under their own steam.

When the whole party was together, the casualty was tied between the two guides, and they started the hazardous traverse across the face of the Gribin to its crest. This steep, broken ground was most treacherous that night; the ledges were frozen hard, but some of the stones had been too dry to freeze and these shifted under their feet when they least expected it. The rock was loose, and the whole face very exposed.

They were relieved to reach the crest without incident, and the descent of the rest of the ridge went fairly smartly as the team, on the shore of Glaslyn below, were setting off flares to light the way down. The four who had been stranded were allowed a quick swig of brandy when they reached the shore, but Lees kept the injured girl moving, afraid that she might collapse from delayed shock. But either because she was a nurse or because of her sex (girls weather shock better than men) she reached the Land-Rover without any sign of collapse.

There were banner headlines in the morning papers - and, to his bewilderment, the Station Commander at Valley was wakened at 7.45 a.m. by the Commander-in-Chief telephoning his congratulations. The C.O. knew nothing about it because the team had come home at 5.0 a.m. and shelved their report for a more civilised hour.

Where Bray had been Lees; security on the Gribin rescue, a year later the positions were reversed beside the Aber Falls, and Bray came out of that one with the Bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society.

A few miles south of Aber, on the North Wales coast, a fast river comes brawling down a hanging valley of the Carnedds to a three-hundred-foot drop above the woods of the coastal plain. The waterfall formed is lovely, but the cliff on its right is steep and dirty and very wet - a cliff to avoid.

On December 1st, 1957, the team had just returned to base camp after an exercise when, as so often happens, they were called out by the police. A climber was in difficulty on the cliff beside the Aber Falls.

They loaded the gear on the trucks and the advance party left in a Land-Rover. They were able to maintain a steady 50 m.p.h. along the coast road with a police escort clearing the way. They had been told than two students from Bangor had been climbing when the leader fell, injuring his head. He hadn't fallen to the foot of the cliff but had stopped on a ledge about one hundred feet above the pool at the foot of the falls.

When they arrived at the scene, they were able to judge the situation for themselves. By the light of flares they could see the injured man high above the foot of the cliff. Fifteen feet to the left of him was the waterfall which was in spare. The ledge itself sloped and, in the light of the flares, streamed and shone with spray. Continue to Page 3