I stood on the tarmac, watching the bus pull away up the Great Glen. I couldn't believe it. Why? I was well known in the town. Lees was then in charge of the Kinloss team and he often hauled me out on rescuers. What had we done to deserve this hostility? Perhaps, I thought, treading the frozen bog behind the distillery, perhaps he is abnormal - and tried to take comfort from the thought. But the bewilderment and the horror persisted.

I was carrying a great deal of gear, for we were expecting to spend a leave in the hut later that month and I had all the ironmongery (pitons, `etriers, etc.) and food in the pack besides what I needed for this weekend. On top of it I'd strapped a heavy sleeping bag. So I plodded slowly and grimly up the first steep slope from the narrow-gauge railway, finding a set of tracks in the snow here and there, and happy to know the others were ahead of me. Tea in an hour's time, I thought, the last bit in darkness; still, I had my headlight handy in my pocket.

But darkness came too quickly and, looking northwards at the clouds that had been there all day, I realised that they had moved at last. They had come south and were settling down on the Ben. There was no sunset. A wind was rising and yet the air seemed heavy, pregnant with snow.

I came over the lip of the steep part and the first flakes began to fall. I was then a little over two miles from the hut and only 1,500 feet lower. I had a long gradual rise to it up the bottom of a glen which was dead straight.

There seemed to be no reason why the snow, the rising wind, and approaching darkness should make me uneasy, but I was. I didn't think of turning back, even when I realised the snow was starting to obscure the tracks, for by this time I had crossed the burn and had struck the line of the main track up the glen - the one they bring the stretchers down - and it was dark.

Now the wind increased very suddenly, driving snow into my face. My eyes are poor at night and I like to wear spectacles then. This was impossible; they were crusted with snow immediately. I took them off. I shone my torch ahead and all I could see was a shifting white wall like a waterfall moving diagonally. The load on my back was a separate part of me, forgotten for a while, all my concentration centred on seeing. And because it was forgotten I was unaware that it was taking its toll.

The ground became rougher as I went higher. I kept well away from the burn because it ran between small walls and a fall of only a few feet could concuss - and concussion would be fatal on a night like this, particularly if I went through the ice into the burn.

I got mixed up with the old glacial moraines and the wind would meet me on a crest and send me sideways. Several times the weight of the rucksack pulled me down. Partly I was tired but mostly it was the weight - I couldn't rise until, as if I were on skis, I had got my feet downhill when I could lever myself upright with the help of the axe.

I was afraid of the drops in the vicinity of moraines. I went very carefully, seeing my feet only occasionally. Sometimes I switched off the light and waited, to try and get the line of the hills against the sky. Then I should know how far up the glen I was. It was essential not to pass the hut. I didn't like standing in the dark waiting for my eyes to get used to it; I thought I was swaying, but I wouldn't sit down to wait.

I went past this stage of being afraid, of knowing I must go on. At first I had remembered the bus driver's words and for one hysterical moment thought it was a judgement. Then I forgot him as the basic urgency of moving - of keeping on the move - asserted itself. Then I knew I must not stop.

But after a while, as if I were drinking or drugged, a new mood came, and I started to think the safest thing to do would be to find a good boulder, to get out my duvet and sleeping bag and go to sleep to recoup my energies. I didn't recall that five friends had done this a few years Continue to Page 3