Two hundred feet above, Lees sat on his little saddle of rock unable, for the roar of the water, to communicate with anyone. The rope by which he had been lowered originally was Bray's, and once he had unclipped from that, a long time ago he was on his own. Eventually the team realised his predicament and dropped another rope to him. He was hauled up bodily and (since all the flares had been used to light the rescue) in total darkness - which took half an hour.

In Lees' remarks following his report he made several recommendations. Typically (for he loved speed on roads) he applauded the assistance of the police in clearing the road on the way to the accident, and suggested that an escort should always be requested in emergencies. But the main recommendations concerned equipment. Ropes of 120 feet, knotted together, were dangerous on a lower. A knot could jam and the man being lowered might strangle. He recommended the issue of 500-foot ropes. he also stressed the necessity for miniature walkie-talkie sets for short-distance work. And he asked that the team could be provided with a tragsitz.

The tragsitz is a frame made of leather and webbing which supports the casualty as he sits on his rescuer's back. At the top if the frame is a wire eye-splice to which the casualty's top rope is attached. At this time rescuers still carried injured men or bodies tied on their backs, and all the weight came on the man carrying. With the tragsitz in use the weight of the casualty is almost completely supported by his top rope; the rescuer must carry him across ledges on the face, but on the walls he acts merely as a shock-absorber. A woman of eight stone should have no difficulty in 'carrying a twelve-stone man, supported by a tragsitz, down a cliff, although she will be unable to cope with ledges unaided.

The first tragsitz to arrive in this country was obtained from Austria by Major H Robertson in response to a request from Lees. First it was handed to the Mountain Rescue Committee, and eventually it cane to Lees for testing and comments. As a result a superior design was worked out in the Valley workshops. They called this the Bradrews Rescue Harness, after its designers: Bray and Paddy Andrews, a fabric worker in the team. It was only slightly modified from the original, the main component being a quick-release fastening which incorporated parachute adjustment and release fastenings. It was Andrews who also made a special canvas sling for rescuing sheep; this was the Ewedrews Harness.

More interesting than the tragsitz itself were the circumstances which led to its appearance in this country.

It started on the afternoon of January 3rd, 1958, when the warden of Odwal Cottage youth hostel telephoned the mountain rescue section at Valley and asked Lees to speak to a Colonel Finch.

Colonel J R G Finch was leading a meet of the newly-formed Army Mountaineering Association, and that day they had gone over to Craig yr Ysfa, a high, remote crag on the Carnedds. The cliff faces north-east towards the Conway Valley and is approached either by a two-mile walk from the roadhead in Cwm Eigiau, or by a steeper (but equally long) ascent from the Climbers' Club hut at Helyg on the A5 motor road - not great distances for a normal approach to a cliff, but important factors on a rescue, particularly in mid-winter.

The Army party had gone to Craig yr Ysfa hoping to climb Amphitheatre Buttress: a moderately easy route under good conditions - a training climb for novices - but a lot of snow had fallen in the last few days, followed by frosts. The buttress was hard and icy and most of the Continue to Page 5