Vanished'. This was seen, and a photograph illustrating it, by a lorry driver and his mate, who reported giving a lift to a man resembling Wallis on February 13th. They had dropped him at Pentrevoelas on the A5. He said he was going to Capel Curig.

By March 17th, nearly a month after the inquiries started, Gwynedd police had come to the conclusion, in the face of extensive but unsuccessful publicity that, despite all these reports, the man had not visited Snowdonia.

On March 27th a man's wristwatch with a broken strap was found near the Devil's Kitchen, but when it was shown to one of wallis's colleagues, he said he had never seen it before.

Some time in March, Corporal Pibworth, then with the Valley mountain rescue team, found a frameless rucksack under stones in the big cairn on top of Bwlch Tryfan. This is on the old Miners' track: the path a man would take if he were walking over the Glyders from Pen y Gwryd hotel to Idwal Cottage youth hostel. The rucksack was empty except for some chocolate wrappers. It was handed to the police at Bethesda.

On May 6th, three students, walking in Cwm Bochlwyd, found a body not far from where the rucksack was discovered. It was sitting with outstretched legs among large boulders. The hood of the anorak was up. This was Lewis Wallis.

The pathologist's report said that he may well have sheltered from bad weather "and the combined effects of exhaustion and cold induced a state of drowsiness, and having fallen asleep he succumbed to cold and exposure".

Men can survive for long periods lost or injured or both - in summertime or in an otherwise temperate climate.

In June 1921 a Mr. Crump from London lost his way in the mist while walking from Coniston in the Lake District to Wasdalehead. He fell into Piers Ghyll - the great gully at the head of Wasdale. In doing so he injured his leg. He stayed there for twenty days without food, but he had water.

If he knew where he was, his thoughts must have been frightening at times, for Piers Ghyll had been climbed only twice, so it was unlikely that they would come to look for him there. In fact, no one did. It was completely by accident that a party of three climbers, attracted by the thought of the ghyll after a period of drought, came to descend it on July 10th and there, sitting quietly gazing down the ghyll, they found Mr Crump.

They managed to get him out of the ghyll, and he recovered completely.

L.D. Bridge in his Mountain Search and Rescue* says that under ideal conditions (that is, the moderate temperature of New Zealand in summer), and with a plentiful water supply, a man can live for a month without food or shelter. Without water he could probably survive a week, and rain on the exposed body could extend his period.

He also gives some instances of survival under winter conditions.

In 1928 two men sheltered `under long snow grass in blizzard conditions without food for one week and then made their own way out after search parties had been withdrawn'.

In November 1954 a man was lost for nine days without food or gear in very wet conditions. He, too, came out alone, after the search party was withdrawn, `in fair physical condition'.

But Bridge notes many instances of men and women dying of exposure in Continue to Page 6

* Published by the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand