A party of police and firemen had been unable to reach the man from the right. His companion had managed to approach within thirty feet, but to the side of, and not above the ledge. The injured man's rope therefore ran horizontally to this second man where it was belayed round a doubtful-looking spike of rock.

In its lower two-thirds, that is, for two hundred feet, the cliff was vert steep; the upper hundred feet sloped easily; but without a belay until the top. Here there was a tree which the rescuers decided to use as a lowering point. Unfortunately the natural lowering line below the tree was a groove which would bring the rescuer down to the side of the ledge where it petered out (and this hiatus was the reason why no one could approach from the right).

One of the team, Maxie Hughes, took over the survivor's position at the end of the casualty's rope. Vic Bray tells the story of what happened then.

"As I was the only person wearing nailed boots, it was suggested that I go down, though Johnnie [Lees] came some distance giving moral support, and attached to the same rope by a Prusik [knot] which proved troublesome. At this stage was were still uncertain as to the best line of descent, as there was a good 100 feet of intervening 'dead ground' between the lowering point and a position from where we could get some bearings. After perhaps 100 feet of this Johnnie sat on a little saddled on a rib forming the right retaining wall of the fall, whilst I transferred to the groove and pressed on down. We had previously arranged with the lowering party that a two star red would be the stop signal.

"My own feelings about all of this were perhaps the usual ones when being lowered down an unknown crag of unknown height in the dark! - however, once moving it was O.K. and rather interesting, but for the one doubt that the rope might not be long enough.

"Everything went smoothly and I finally emerged from the bottom of the groove and saw the rest of the team below in the light of the flares - I was now at the horizontal rope and immediately clipped it to my waist crab [carabineer] before moving left perhaps 10 feet to 12 feet to where the body was, and where I slipped his waist loop to mine before firing off a two star red. (Was told afterwards by the lowering party that the second knot had just passed out at this stage - 240 feet).

"There was now a bulge or rock between Johnnie and us so I was out of contact with the topside, also the noise from the fall drowned out most shouts with the people below. I seems to remember shouting to Maxie that we would step off and that he was to pull us towards him, after which we did just that. This resulted in a downwards pendule to the right and we finished in rather a tangled mass in the centre of a steep slab which we then crawled up with help from Max, whom I could now converse with.

"Several firemen now came out and dropped us another rope, and after a tremendous fight with a dead tree we arrived on easy ground, much to my relief, as I was being cut in two by the body's weight hanging from my waist ... I didn't think at the time of attaching him to the rope with a separate Prusik loop which would have made things far easier - it would also have been far preferable to have gone straight on down the crag, but doubts on length of rope available plus lack of communication to find out if there was enough, decided me against same at the time".
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