of them reached the top, but somewhere on the route they had lost contact with the fourth man. He was last seen at 2.30 pm forging ahead up the face and rather to the right of the line being followed by the others. He was wearing a shirt and light pullover, and grey flannels. On his feet he wore plimsolls. He carried no other clothing and no food.

It was wet and misty on top. The party of three descended into a valley running north-north-west, sheltered for a while in a bothy, and eventually found themselves at Loch an Eilein. Later than evening they returned to Gleann Einich and went as far as the foot of the cliffs, but they could find no trace of their friend.

Kinloss had just returned from a strenuous two-day exercise in Kintail when the call-out came at 1.15 am on July 17th. They arrived at Aviemore at 2.50 am and interviewed one of the walkers. Base camp was established at Achnagoichan, near Loch an Eilein, but they were able to drive a Land-Rover some distance farther, up Gleann Einich. However, there were still three and a half miles to cover before they could reach the foot of the cliff.

At 4.50 am four parties, each consisting of three men, set out to cover specified routes. One party traversed the summit ridge, another covered the north-west slopes of the mountain, and the remaining two were searching along the foot of the eastern cliffs.

Cloud was down t 2,900 feet, but visibility below that was good. At 10.00am a two star red went up from the foot of Number Three Buttress. The body was lying at the foot of the steep lower slabs. The watch had stopped at 3.15.

The cause of the accident was obvious, for the man had been attempting a climb which, according to the guidebook, has never been done in its entirety. The buttress, says the guide, “forms the largest rock mass of the face...and provides a fairly well defined arête after the lower slabs are passed. "On the occasion of the first ascent “these were snow-covered and might be difficult in summer when bare. About a third of the way up, the party met a steep wall, offering for holds only shaky flakes, and were compelled to traverse to the right, regaining the ridge by a small snow-paved gully."*

These shaky flakes which acted as a warning in 1902 (when expert mountaineers left them alone) assume a more sinister significance in 1961 - for the fallen man was picked up several hundred feet below them.

On this accident the RAF were fortunate in that the body fell to the foot of the cliff, otherwise, as in the case of others already mentioned, recovery would have been highly dangerous work. It is a bad thing that so many men should risk their lives for one who is dead, and a great misfortune that we do not possess the train that renders such rescues unnecessary. In the Alps bodies are sometimes left in crevasses. Britain possessing no glaciers, our mountain rescue teams must always bring the body down. Continue to Chapter 10

*The Cairngorms, published by the Scottish Mountaineering Club, 1938, page 186