party rejected it. But two started the climb: Major Hugh Robertson and Lieutenant Eagle.

At 2.30 p.m. these two were very near the top of the steep lower section when Robertson, who was leading, fell. Fortunately the ledges on this route are big and, instead of rolling over the edge, he fell no farther than the stance where Eagle was belayed. But he had fallen about thirty feet and he was badly injured and delirious.

The rest of the party failed to reach the two stranded climbers from gullies on either side of the buttress, and most of them went down to Idwal for the rescue equipment which was kept there.

The team was called out at 4.33 p.m. The advance party, composed of the most experienced climbers, left first in a Land-Rover, covering the thirty-two miles between Valley and Idwal in forty-five minutes and without a police escort (this involved two towns and several villages, but they had a bell on the front which was working). The vehicle was left at the highest farm on the mountain, Glan Llugwy, and then, carrying portable searchlights and eight ropes of 120 feet each, they went very quickly up the mountain to the summit ridge. Frost had dried out the bogs and there was a brilliant full moon.

On top they found the Army party about to lower a stretcher down the gully beside and below the Amphitheatre Buttress. After a short consultation it was decided that, before the stretcher went down, the R.A.F. should descend and ascertain the condition of the injured man and his second.

They started down in the dark (the moon didn't reach here as the cliff faces north) and they fixed ropes down the rocks for the security of those who might come after, and for themselves returning. About two hundred feet below the top they met a lone soldier who joined up with them but had some difficulty with the next section - a coxcomb of exposed pinnacles. Here the gullies slope steeply down on either side before their last plunge to the screes seven hundred feet below. They decided to try to turn the pinnacles, only to find themselves committed to some severe climbing before they could reach a ledge which led them out on to the open buttress below the coxcomb.

From here they worked they way down a hundred feet of thick steep heather snow-covered, to the top if the precipitous section of the climb. Below them the buttress dropped away to the foot of the cliff. On their left the drop was less - but still about two hundred feet, and seemingly bottomless now, for the amphitheatre was in deep shadow.

Three of them abseiled the next thirty-five feet and came down on the final ledge where they were received with pleasure by Lieutenant Eagle. He was in excellent shape morally. He had been on his ledge with a delirious man for over six hours, in the bitter cold of a January afternoon and evening, with the constant fear of frostbite - or of being knocked off the ledge by Robertson - and now he was bubbling over with eagerness to help.

Robertson lay on the ledge semi-conscious and with severe head injuries (his skull was fractured). It would have taken the whole tam - and more ropes than were available - to lower a stretcher to this place. The injured man woudln't last that long in the extreme cold. Even now it was doubtful if he would survive. Speed was essential and since he had no spinal injuries, the obvious way to get him off the cliff, fast, Continue to Page 6