After a while they were reunited and the six continued along the summit ridge, where the master warned them to keep on the Llydaw or south to avoid being dislodged from their holds by sudden gusts of wind. There was intermittent rain. After the pinnacles of Crib Goch they were halted again and it was explained what they were doing, and what it entailed. At 4.0 p.m., on Crib y Ddisgl, the two ropes contact for the second time. By now the weather conditions has deteriorated further. They were in dense cloud and it was raining.

The master untied and went back to try to find the other party. He looked for ten minutes, thought it probable he has passed them in the cloud, and returned to his own party. He took these boys to the summit, left them, and again searched back as far as Crib y Ddisgl. Then he took the remaining two down to Nantgwynant where he reported the others as missing.

Two members of the school staff went up to search, with no success. Two other members, including the master who had been on Crib Goch, searched Lliwedd but found no one.

The following day one hundred people are reported to have searched Snowdon until dark and from all directions without success. Then the R.A.F. were called in.

Lees and Bray listened to the story and decided that the obvious place to look was the Parson's Nose: the spur that runs out to the north from near the summit of Crib y Ddisgl. It was obvious because the boys had last been seen on Crib y Ddisggl, and because it was a likely place for them to go wrong. To the novice approaching the junction of these two paths: of that continuing to Snowdon, which he should follow, and the other, going off to the right for the Parson's Nose, the latter might appear to be the correct route. Here the main track bears right on scree. In mist it might appear to continue in that direction, but that is the path to the Parson's Nose, the main track doubles back to the left. One might pass this spot a dozen times in clear weather without realizing the possibility of a mistake in cloud.

The upper part of the ridge ending in the Nose is pleasant scrambling which, in descent, continues innocuous for some distance, when suddenly, in the last two or three hundred feet, it steepens dramatically above the screes, and the only way down is a rock climb.

It was arranged to concentrate on this area at first light the following morning.

Before the search recommenced, Lees held a briefing in the Pen y Gwryd Hotel. The main objective was to make sure that Crib y Ddisgl was searched meticulously, but he had more than enough men to do this, so he was able to disperse other parties over the flanks of Snowdon with radio operators or other competent R.A.F. personnel to supervise the sweep searches.

The main sweep started at Bwlch Goch, the grassy saddled on the Snowdon Horseshoe below Crib y Ddisgl. The searchers started along the line that the boys had taken two days before, with the best climbers working along the cliffs under the ridge: between its crest and the cwm below. There were other men on the ridge, and walkers in the cwm.

When the climbers came to the north ridge of Crib y Ddisgl they continued on the same contour and started to work down towards the Nose. They had not gone far when a two star red went up, and the search was
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