before and four had died. I felt no pain, not even any discomfort; I don't remember any great fatigue. I just wanted to get out of it.

Then an idea occurred. Had I missed the hut? Where the hell was I? A mile beyond it, in Coire Leis? There was no light, but then, of course, no light would shine through the blizzard. I had a whistle. I had never blown it for myself. The very thought of hearing those sinister blasts so close made me shrink in horror. It would be an admission of emergency, an admission that I didn't want to make. Nor was I too far gone to know that it would be an admission of incompetence.

Again I went on, but only a little way. I wasn't in a panic and if my stupidity had brought me to this pass, I had some sense left. With the miserable and certain reflection that I would go down in the morning and resign my guide's certificates, I took out my whistle and started to blow.

It astonished me how much breath was needed and how thin was the sound produced. It had never occurred to me that I wouldn't be heard. I didn't trouble to signal. I just blew. Then I stopped and listened.

There was no answer.

I started forward again and then stopped. I was panting hard and I felt desperate - more so than before I had appealed for help.

I listened again. There was no human sound in the glen. As I started to move again the despair drained away, leaving me without any emotion at all. I wasn't afraid or desperate or guilty. I didn't think I was going to live, nor did I think I would die. I didn't think of my family. I didn't care. I moved slowly, still carefully, with the light shining ahead on the snow. It was some time before I realised that it was shining on snow on the ground, not on the falling flakes of the last few hours. I couldn't believe it. I planted my feet for balance, switched off the light and waited.

High, very high above, there was a star or two - no silhouette of hills for the cloud was on them, but torn apart above the glen. The wind had died down here. Calm and relaxed and still empty with exhaustion I looked for the hut and saw it below me and slightly ahead. The faint yellow light of a single window bringing me down off the slopes of Carn Mor Dearg.

I stopped outside the door and tried to fix a smile but by that time reaction had set in and I could only bare my teeth.

My only consolation was that, much later, a Greag Dhu party came in. They had taken longer than I, they hadn't had the blizzard and there were three of them, all large men. My pride got to its feet, and stood up, wobbling. I didn't surrender my guide's certificates.

There is hardly any bad luck in the mountains, only good. It wasn't bad luck that the snow moved south when it did; it was a calculated risk. But having calculated it and thought a storm would keep off, I was over-confident and took other risks. I started too late. I didn't know that it was impossible to see in a blizzard. I didn't know how weak a wind and a heavy pack can make you. I didn't know how easy it is to die, that wind can exhaust you to such an extent that there is no reason left to live, no incentive. Exhaustion is a drug.

Perhaps the cessation of the storm saved me, but perhaps the instruction I had received: from books, from older mountaineers, and from my own experiences, was so deeply ingrained that when I was so disinterested that I no longer thought of my last reserves of strength, training took over and I went on when the brain had no interest whether I lived or died.

I should have turned back at the top of the first steep section above the distillery when I realised it was getting dark too quickly and that the snow had moved south. Or I should have sheltered in the tin bothy by the dam which was quite near. Continue to Page 4