I didn't want them to get away from me the following morning so I decided to sleep in a lorry on the camp. (I always carried a sleeping bag in my car for emergencies such as this.)

Midges woke us at seven. We went up above the camp to a little tarn full of water lilies.

"There is a sheep on Lliwedd," I said.

Lees in a bad mood is hell and unapproachable. In a good mood he would commit murder for me. And my sympathy with animals amuses and delights him. He will humour me in these feminine whims to the extent of putting the whole team at my disposal (or did) as long as he thought he was still running it. Getting the goodwill of the team was more difficult, so I always insisted on having a tricky job myself. That way they couldn't criticise me and I might get them again. The other advantage of keeping such a job for myself was that I have inexhaustible patience in an emergency, particularly with a trapped animal.

Lees delights in things following a conventional pattern. When he recognised that he had been lured to the water lily tarnn to grant me a favour he was charmed. Of course we would go and rescue my sheep; of course I could go down for it. After breakfast.

I followed him down to the camp, dreading the unspoken comments of the team, afraid to meet their eyes. But I'd got them.

We stopped before we reached the screes and studied the face of Lliwedd through binoculars. I hadn't realised how hard it was to identify the Terrace from this angle, but finally I found Terminal Arête by its quartz base, then the Bowling Green (Lees thought, from my description, that the sheep was there but I thought it above and to the right). He became very impatient as I searched for it, and would not wait, stumping off up the hill, the men trailing behind him dismally.

My first impulse was to follow them, but knowing how essential it was to find the animal before we were lowered, I concentrated again on the Bowling Green, and then started systematically searching the ledges to its right. I spotted it almost immediately, quite large and clear, feeding. I shouted to the others, then stayed a little longer, working out the route of descent. The sheep, I decided, was roughly where I had thought: between Central Gully and Great Chimney and level with the Bowling Green.

Then I went up the easy gully, working out a plan as I went, Lees was going up way over on my left.

The pigeon was gone this morning. I toiled to the top, found the advance party smoking round the cairn, got myself ready, and went to the top of Central Gully to reconnoitre. I went down a little way and found a ledge for lowering: about sixty feet below the summit ridge. Of course, I couldn't see the sheep; I hadn't expected to. Anyway, I knew now where it was, about four or five hundred feet below. The place was absolutely appalling, with tumbled rocks balanced at the top of precipitous walls, and all the ledges covered with gravel and scree.

The team took up their positions on the ledge, and this time, because of the lonely position of the sheep, three of us were to go down. When I buckled on my crash helmet Continue to Page 6