should be cancelled.

They also recommended that no runner should be allowed to compete unless he had surveyed the route beforehand.

Two years later the team were prudently 'exercising' on the Ben (although not an official First Aid party) when another runner in the race collapsed near the summit. They evacuated him on a rope stretcher until they met others bringing up a sledge.

Where at one time local opinion of the teams had been poor, it underwent a transformation in the decade following 1951. An allied factor in the popularity of Kinloss, in particular, may be that during that period at least twelve members of the team married girls from Fort William or its environs.

In 1961 Dr John Brewster of the Moray Mountaineering Club wrote:

“...the [Kinloss] RAF team is now probably the most competent and efficient rescue team in the country... In April 1954 I was at Derry Lodge with other members of the Moray MC on a weekend meet. On our last afternoon there two of our members fell several hundred feet on Cairn Toul. One was severely injured, the other was able to reach Corrour Bothy. At 8.00pm that evening I sent a message from Corrour asking for the Kinloss team to be sent out. They responded promptly and did a very fine job. The worst casualty had to be carried a distance of 8 miles. It is to their credit that he survived and is now able to climb again.“

As always, to get an injured man down alive was the crowning achievement of a rescue. There is an air of urgency, of efficiency, of concentrated sympathy when a living man is being lowered that is absent during the recovery of a corpse. In the latter case the men are on edge and snap at those outside the rescue circle. It is at such times that reporters are treated rudely. And yet some of the most difficult rescues are undertaken in order to recover bodies, although until contact with the victim is established, the rescuers may delude themselves into thinking that life is not yet extinct. Perhaps this is a natural defence mechanism that ensures that they keep going rather than debating in their minds whether it is worth running this risk for a dead man. Once doubt creeps into the mind of a rescuer he is in considerable danger himself. While they have the incentive of life to be saved discomfort is forgotten and danger - to a great extent - ignored.

Liathach is a fine mountain of 3,456 feet standing to the north of Glen Torridon. The highest point is Spidean a' Choire Leith. This may be approached by a serrated ridge on which stand the Fasarinen Pinnacles. In summer these present very little difficulty, but in winter they become considerably harder, as is usual with any scramble under snow.

On April 5th, 1959, there was snow on the mountain: old, hard winter snow, and snow in the air. But that morning the weather seemed to be improving and a man and girl decided to climb Liathach. They carried no rope and no axes.

They reached the first summit (Mullach an Rathain) where they met two men who were also planning to traverse the mountain. They boy and girl went ahead along the ridge to the pinnacles of Am Fasarinen. The wind was rising, the rock was becoming difficult and there were flurries of snow in the air. Continue to Page 12