Being Searchable

Who knows what this winter will throw at us in these uncertain times. For sure the ski areas that are open may well be very busy indeed not only with regulars, but snow hungry off pisters who normally ski the alps and may well be complacent about our smaller mountains that punch above their weight literally when it comes to avalanches. 

Nothing substitutes good planning and knowledge to avoid getting avalanched, but the very nature of the sport is uncertainty and with enough risk exposure bad things can happen. It's fair to say as ski patrollers and hard charging skiers that means us. The point has been laboured often enough by me that nothing substitutes having the three essentials of transceiver, shovel and probe and being slick with deploying them effectively, and managing the scene well, which comes down to practice. 

Sadly mountaineers do not have the same philosophy as off piste skiers and tourers about companion rescue, and the focus is very much on prevention such as the SAIS "Be avalanche Aware".  All well and good, but sadly when buried often the mountaineering victims cannot be found in a timely manner by companions, and worse still organised rescue even if on scene quickly has few means of finding them other than probing, or with luck a search dog. Recco is not a panacea for this, but it does add an incremental gain and every year lives are saved by it as victims are found alive. From burial, avalanche search statistics show that companion rescue gives the best chance of survival, then Recco and also in the alps avalanche dogs, with least live recoveries from formal probe lines. Probe lines do find folk alive but not often, and while most victims are eventually recovered by a probe strike it's down to the sheer numbers of searchers and length of time poking in the snow, all mostly at the wrong end of the survival probability curve. Spot probing, a random poke in the snow in likely spots also occasionally results in a survival, but that's down to luck unless it's a really small confined slide. If you're searchable you're found more quickly and more likely to survive.

Recco continues to be accepted into more clothing brands and now also into mountaineering clothing as the "be searchable" message gets through to the winter recreation public.  Recent additions are Patagonia and Arcteryx into mountain specific technical garments. The Recco SAR pod is now with more helicopter based search and rescue units such as Air Zermatt, PHGM and CS Chamonix and to sites across North America. Quite a few notable success stories from this, and not all avalanche based with some in water or in dense forest.  When the helicopter flies at a height of 100m, it is able to scan an area that is 100m wide. When the speed of the helicopter is 100 km/h this translates to 1 km2 coverage within six minutes.

As the UK's trainer for Recco I am happy to offer advice on training on the system to anyone interested. I also sell aftermarket reflectors and for BASP members and patrollers I can offer a discount. I can do either single pocket reflectors to be carried, or helmet reflectors. Two reflectors are the optimum to carry. Please note if you have an Ortovox transceiver that is less than 4 years old it will already have a Recco reflector inside its workings as a backup. 

Unlike a transceiver search along a flux line, Recco harmonic radar is a straight line to the victim and a Recco R9 detector is equipped to search both harmonic radar and 457kHz transceiver simultaneously. The 457kHz is analog allowing a greater range than digital and the ability to hear more than one signal and detect overlap. When nearer the victim the Recco becomes primary and a second rescuer hones in on a digital transceiver signal - or vice versa. Who cares who finds the victim first as speed is the key. If you're not searchable then the odds are stacked against you until someone pokes you or it thaws.

2 x Recco reflectors £40

Ortovox 3+ Transceiver £209

Ortovox "Beast" Shovel £47.50

Ortovox 240 alu Probe £35

Be searchable!

Avalanche Education. Problem or Solution?

What is intended to be the solution to avalanche incidents is education of the mountaineering public. Making them aware of pre-trip planning, weather and avalanche forecasts, and human behavioural issues. Cognitive thinking traps using the popular acronym FACETS is one example of softer "thinking" skills now used as part of the education package.

FAMILIARITY

Parties traveling in familiar terrain made riskier decisions than parties traveling in unfamiliar terrain. This effect was especially pronounced for parties with substantial experience and training.

ACCEPTANCE

Group members want to be accepted by members of their parties. “Accident parties that included females made riskier decisions than parties of all males. The effect was most pronounced in parties with little avalanche training. It is notable that these were precisely the parties in which women were least likely to participate.”

CONSISTENCY

Parties that were highly committed to a goal – a summit, ski slope or an objective in deteriorating weather – made riskier decisions than parties just out for a day. This effect was most pronounced in parties of four or more.

EXPERT HALO

Accident parties often contained a de facto leader – someone who was more experienced, older, or more skilled. Novices were more likely to follow the leader into dangerous situations than when novice groups made decisions by consensus.

TRACKS/SCARCITY

Parties took more risks when they were racing a closing window of opportunity, such as competing with another group for first tracks.

SOCIAL FACILITATION

When skilled parties meet other people in the backcountry, they are more likely to take risks than parties that are less skilled. This effect was most pronounced in groups with the highest levels of training.

Most of the education of mountaineers is based on avalanche avoidance such as "Be avalanche Aware", a very sound proposition, but every year dozens of avalanche incidents are reported, some with victims buried, or missing for long periods before recovery, sadly dead.  And they are not "Searchable". Despite superb forecasting and reliable weather data its “plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose” same old same old.

Q. Is there a tendency for avalanche trained folks to have more avalanche accidents not less?

Could it be that certainty is being implied via processes, to an environment where no such thing is possible – ever!  Facilitated by educators such as instructors, guides, and others? Folk leave training courses feeling more educated and empowered as they have more knowledge. Maybe thinking they will have travel in avalanche terrain a bit more dialled. Is it a false sense of more certainty where none exists?

Q. Is there ever certainty in steep snow covered terrain?

Educators spend a lot of time on bells and whistles during training to imply gaining some degree of certainty during snowpack analysis to make decisions on safe travel. I understand the need for bulking out a course to paying guests with the commonly taught practical "doing" things, like  rutsch blocks, column tests and snowpack study, with other investigative stuff.  But its not future avalanche forecasters they are teaching, its recreational mountaineers and skiers and these investigative skills are perhaps irrelevant distractions from self and spatial awareness.  Off most value in these “tests” is a group stopped then talking, communicating concerns, and making collective decisions. This pause is often when individual concerns are aired, and leader decisions can be challenged or discussed. As the proverb goes “in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king”. Some knowledge can be better than none in the right head, but ask yourself if it’s the one leading your group, are you being listened to, and do you feel happy with where your all at. Listening to that bad feeling from someone in a group can save lives. Speak to individual survivors of an avalanche incident and a precognition feeling will have occurred to many but may have been ignored or supressed. I think it was Reinhold Messner in “The 7^th Grade” who said ignoring these precognition feelings is folly. Its been 35 years since I read that book but this comment stuck as it resonated with events in my own life even then as a survivor of a couple of near misses to me that took friends, although these were not all on the mountains.

Precognition or prescience is not paranoia but often your senses and sensory awareness picking up recognizable patterns, perhaps from previous life events and experiences. 20:20 hindsight is no use when you can't breathe so we should heed the senses.

As a personal example. One day way back mid 1980's a friend Paul Mills who was fairly new to winter climbing said he wanted to climb No 6 Gully a classic grade 4 in Glencoe. He wanted to do it the old fashioned way to see what it was like cutting steps, no ice screws, a single rope and just some pegs and slings. Off we went soloing up the banked out lower pitches on soft snow until we got to the last and main ice pitch where Paul belayed me from the ice cave, and I set off up the icy corner to a peg runner and cut hand and foot holds until over the top. 

I was going to go over to belay across to the right where a little chimney finishes up. A couple of steps and my senses went into overdrive. The top bowl was loaded with a deep yet dryer slabby snow blown in from cross loading, and I would have to cross it with the pitch below me to go over if it slid. I didn't like it at all, so I back climbed all the way back and down to Paul, a not inconsiderable use of energy and adrenaline. He was not best pleased but regardless the decision was made to solo down the post holes we made on the up, so it was ok with care. 

We exited the gully and met a group of four lads one of whom was the boyfriend at the time of local girl Mary Anne, daughter of one of my climbing partners Wull. We had a chat and they asked why we had back climbed down and Paul took the piss a bit saying the step cutting had worn me out and I was an old fearty. I mentioned the exit snow and that I wasn't happy with it but didn't labour the point.  

We headed back to the village and later learned that  two had gone over the pitch in an avalanche and it also caught the other two lower down. All 4 went out the bottom of the gully over the luckily banked out first pitch terrain trap and all the way, almost to the stream crossing. Several hundreds of feet! They were all cut up and bruised with the worst injury a broken wrist, so extremely lucky.  I was asked later as to why I hadn't talked them out of it. I am sure that I felt it was a personal choice and that my prescience wasn't enough to talk someone else out of it. And yet both before this and after heeding this precognition saved my life. I am not a risk avoider having done many daft things including soloing. But ignoring that inner voice going "whoa there" is also a big part of what I didn't go on to do.

I also read a very good article based on the French SERAC database on touring accidents sice published in Montagnes magazine which is worth translating:

https://www.montagnes-magazine.com/actus-accidentologie-premiere-analyse-ski-randonnee?fbclid=IwAR1hMxSRc7RK9VtV0AR5Y_wPM5O2llGGFrKxQ8iha_4zWl8rHvIIWjZRUDI

A key passage: "The first striking result confirming the central place of humans in the preservation of their security is the following: in almost half of the accounts (49%, n = 35) a risk is perceived, intuition or felt , to a greater or lesser extent. aware by the participants, but they maintain their commitment. Conversely, 13% (n = 10) of respondents report an avalanche event whose onset or extent completely surprised them. In avalanche events more than elsewhere, practitioners describe perceiving the danger, or at least the intuition that something is wrong, but they "go there anyway". Thirty-five practitioners describe that they sensed a dangerous situation, but maintained their commitment for various reasons, which sometimes cannot be explained to themselves"

Q. Do avalanche safety tools, like the three essentials (beacon, shovel, probe) ABS/Avalung increase risk acceptance?

We humans fail – period. Only when we have checklists and procedures that compensate for our proneness to error can we (to some extent) either prevent the failure or mitigate failures consequences. Safety tools are an essential part of that mitigation. If we cannot predictably and 100% reduce the risk, we can at least reduce some of the consequences. Carrying the tools to reduce the consequences should not comfort us to increase the risk, but it subtly it does. Wearing a helmet skiing as an example you just go faster. Having an ABS folk push the envelope and ski sketchier terrain which up to a point they might get away with on a clean runout, but not if there is a terrain trap. Risk appetites go up when folk carry consequence reduction tools when it shouldn't. That is in essence being human, and fallible.  

I listened to a good podcast from Silverton Avalanche school in the San Juans Colorado a few days ago on this very subject "risk homeostasis". Silverton is an area where we have family connections as my wife’s brother lived there until recently before moving further down the pass to Durango, his wife was secretary for Ouray SAR at one time. The guy from the avalanche school there (it’s the oldest in the USA) gave an example of going to the top of a 32 deg slope with a group and getting them to dump their beacons, shovels and probes and any ABS within the group, then asking them to ski the line. They all threw their teddys out the cot, but it should have made no difference. Its either safe to ski or its not. No grey areas.

And for fecks sake, who in their right mind skis a slope in the knowledge that they might need the mouth piece from an Avalung in their thrapple in case their entombed and literally then have to breath from the crack of their arse!

 Q. What do we know before we go, and what should we do while we are going?

• The worst folk to be with are consciously incompetent, or reckless and impulsive. The next worst are ignorant and unconsciously incompetent
•  
• The best folk are UIAGM Guides or other mountain professionals including seasoned and trusty amateurs who you trust, who listen and make considered decisions i.e those who have both an unconscious and conscious competence.
•  
• For the amateur needing to get good experience, this is a process towards the same level of unconscious and conscious competence as the professionals. This helps prevent bad experience - hopefully!

Among the winter mountains we ditch certainty and embrace uncertainty and make decisions accordingly. 

To survive until pensionable age a high level of respect for the mountains while their guest is required, and letting them tell you if your welcome or not that day. Heed what they tell you and heed your precognition.

We do not conquer the mountains we travel among them, and when we get avalanched its on us for not listening and not seeing. An avalanche course may be an important tool along the way, but so is understanding your Johari window.

Some Glencoe Trad and Stuff

As Summer has gone, Autumn a Covid shit show, and bike hire closed because we don't want to risk folk bringing the virus into our community, not much else to do but Blog. The two local walls are open but being old gits we have to pick our time when we go, and be extra careful. I am quite strong from training and a fairly good summer working my way through the 7a Max book list of top routes as the goal. Its given me a good progression, but mostly harder routes left, I know I can project some 7a and send on sight most but not all 6c's but the odd 7b indoor and out is past it seems as I just don't have the power or maybe they were just easy for the grade. Another year older next year, so even more training just to stand still as it gets harder each year. 

We are lucky with two quite different but equally good local walls. I like the social at 3WM and bouldering and the new training room is superb, but more college students use it and a smaller space makes us circumspect about when we go. Ice Factor, I particularly like the harder routes as projects or just because its nearer to climbing hard sport outside. 

7A Max ***

No Respect for your Elders" 6c+ and "High Voltage" 6b+ Robs Reed, a cracking route and venue with boulder fingery starts.

The training pays off more leading routes at Ice Factor, a  bit like Ratho does for Kalymnos but shorter and punchy so needs power. Training the "pump out" is the easy bit if your a lifelong trad climber and Ratho does this by route length so a 6b might just be a long 6a. Anyone can crush a dozen or more leads in the 6a/b - but for me I like the IF route setting (its particularly good at the moment) that uses my training and pushes my "power out" so better for harder routes. It's what I like about hard sport. I have done my share of A/E time with injuries some quite debilitating, and I suffer from a long term chronic illness that's a bugger but doesn't stop me trying - at least until it hits hard most often when tired and the bugs invade. Gone is the gallus youth, so sport offers achievable goals, technical challenge and relative safety. Crushing hard is satisfying, and even some easier routes catch you unawares as they need thought out. A long winter is ahead so these walls to me are an important part of my mental health management, and probably to some of the folk reading this. It's not like it was pre Covid, but it can be ok if we follow the rules.

Clachaig Gully 1973  16 years old. Single Rope, hardly any gear, big boots and the then ubiquitous "Compton Climber" Helmet. More like a motor bike helmet!  Niave and ended up rescued in November off the N. Face Aonach Dubh by the cave when rope ran out, denims froze to legs and in a blizzard. Hypothermia, but walked off after Walter, Hamish and Wull came up and sorted us out.

Polldubh 1978 (guess the route - later went back and FA climbed the awfully named "Dying Crutchman" up over the middle of the overlap to join it. At least some gear, but it wasn't great. Whillans ball wrecker harness that caused some serious injuries to the groin. The MOACS however were brilliant. EB's and Levi or Wrangler flares were the thing then ......

Dunkeld 1976. The Needle in the early doors, 4 pints in Newtonmore then a wee solo of Ivy Crack in big boots before heading down to Wales for a week to meet Fell and Rock climbers in the pass at Ynys Ettws Hut. Bonkers - soloing and after beer. Soloing a mugs game as  eventually you die on something easy.

1980's sticky rubber - not! Chouinard "Canyons" and the original Friends from Wild Country. On "Cayman Grooves E15a/b. An excellent first pitch but the top up the side of the chimney a bit run out although easy. For two great pitches "Walk with Destiny" E2 5b/c is one of the best evening routes in the Glen.  Watch out in spring as there is often a Peregrine Falcon nesting behind the tree that can be used to abseil. Its good fun to do the first pitch of Piranah VS, Cayman and Walk with Destiny and rap off for an evening hit. 

Carnivore pitch 1. One of Glencoe's classic routes when combined with the "Villains Finish" an airy pull out right above the Whillans peg and then  a runout up steep ground to the top. A 500ft route on a 150ft crag.

Line Up pitch 1

On "Line Up" about 1983. (Pictures Alan Thompson). One of the best HVS routes on BEM and Glencoe, F.A local Ian Nicholson. Rannoch Wall delivers a mountain feel in spades, there are no duff routes (well maybe route 1 but its good in winter). The left side higher up the gully is a bit neglected as its a bit steeper and shorter. Give "Wappenshaw Wall" a go, its steep with lots of thank god holds, and "Peasants Passage" is amazing and quite technical for a VS. Spare a thought for the guys who ran them out on the F.A's way back. Imagine Ogilvy & Speakman in plimsoles pre WW2 putting up "Red Slab" with the quite intimidating crux on pitch 2. To enjoy many of these locations its worth knowing a bit of the history. Ken Crockets "A History of Scottish Mountaineering" is a good place to start.

Line Up pitch 2

As Tom Patey remarked about the Scottish climber: "How does he climb, solo and briskly, on 20 fags a day and Scotlands good malt whisky".  "big Ian" having a tipple on an ascent of Valkyrie E2 Etive slabs. Picture scan from slide taken on an OM1 by Fiona Gunn 

Finishing up "Wappenshaw Wall" VS  Then I was climbing on twin 9mm ropes but they were 45m (150ft) long a far cry from todays ropes and often pulled up short if used to build a belay.

Andy Macdonald on "Bludgers/Revelation" HVS, a classic outing skirting the left edge of slime wall. We did "Shibboleth" E2 that day then Bludgers Revelation the next weekend which was late September and unusually hot and dry. "Bloody Crack"  is IMHO (as well as "Pontoon" pitch 2) the best crack lines in Glencoe. Bloody Crack has good pro but its a fight to the finish as thuggy. Patsy Walsh was a strong man! As good as Shibboleth is "Apparition" E2 and Lechers/Superstition is tremendous. "Ravens Edge" is a well worthwhile adventure with unique situations. Great Gully buttress upper and lower can be climbed after doing a slime wall route. All the upper routes are tremendous with Yam, Yamay and May cracks particularly good. June and July cracks are the better of the lower buttress routes, and "The Whip" is a sandbag and quite serious. August crack isn't a patch on the others IMHO

Not to forget the lower Glen which is another post. "Rainmaker" is a fantastic VS mountain route with a bit of an adventure to get to but well worth it. climber Dave Hannah with a big smile on a fine route that for once was dry. Going over the top get the excellent and not so often climbed "Nirvana Wall" in on the way down.

The Strath of Glencoe

It's been quite some time since my last blog post.  It's been reasonably busy with bike hire and repairs despite the awful weather and late spring.  We have also had family commitments not least of which was attending my sons graduation from Aberdeen University.

I am having a year off the bike racing as I need to re balance my time and health.  I am however re kindling my lifelong affair with fishing.  I have fished since I was maybe about six years old and remember my mother having to put a worm on a hook for me as I didn't like them, and epic frustrations from my dad with tangled line at the tidal pool. Those who knew his patience level can imagine the expletives!

Blackbirds nest next to a place I fish.  We meet every day. She flew back in and was obviously not bothered

Pink Hawthorn or "Mayflower" which is where the saying "nere cast a cloot till may is oot" comes from.  Only this year your cloot shouldnt have been cast even in June!

Early trips up to Loch Ba with Jock MacDonald and his boat, and many future boys own expeditions wandering over Rannoch moor, losing wellies in bottomless bogs and using the sound of the train at Rannoch so we knew we had walked 180deg in the wrong direction and would miss Andrew the local bus driver waiting for us on the A82 if we didnt run were all character forming, especially when still only 10 years old. My mother was worried sick. 

Later trips to Bealach and even out to exotic locations like over the hill to Lundavra and a shot of the good boat if it wasn't out.  My early rod was a split cane 9ft with a level taper line and small flies bought from rare trips on the bus over the ferry to the excellent Rod and Gun shop next to the bus station in Fort William.  There was always good advice and help form the two older gents who ran the shop, and later when I had a few quid saved from working the "Grotto" petrol pumps they set me up with a nice hollow glass 9'6 fly rod and reel which I still have.  It was a very soft action rod and later nearly broke at the lower brass ferrule with a small grilse from the "Doctors Pool" on the Duror. There wasn't a puddle with fish in it that I didn't explore, and some rock climbing was required on occasion to reach hidden pools  I revisited one last year and the pool which would have given me a half dozen big sea trout  up to 3lbs and maybe a grilse, was absent of fish including the many small brownies that would come to the fly.  Banks of Sitka spruce have probably made the water too acidic.

Lower Coe falls and its water worn rocks.  There are intials from the ealy 19th century chipped into the rock from when Strathcona removed the arch that spanned the river to improve Salmon access.  You need to know where to look .....

It's fair to say in some ways that these explorations were among and a part of the mountains. As a teen when introduced to the heady mix of mountaineering, climbing, alcohol, women, and exotic places (but not many exotic women sadly) to pursue the mountain addiction. I suppose I became quite good at climbing, and climbed many of the classic hard routes and test pieces.  I was also lucky to be a very young member of the local rescue team at only 16, having already been going on rescues with a neighbour since I was younger.  These were the days of shepherds, stalkers and forestry workers with only a few climbers.  Money was scarce, politics of rescue non existent, and only the needs of the victims was at the forefront.  The reward was good craic, a plate of soup and a few free drams and maybe a "lock in" at Clachaig or Kingshouse.  A once a year issue of socks and thermal underwear was a bonus, but no one was without a good "Cag" and boots, the essentials.  There was no parading about like a shops dummy with overpriced Arcterxc.

Lucky for me I met Fiona who was to be my wife and climbing partner and who kicked me from manual labour as a wood cutter (my excuse - it kept me strong for climbing) to using a brain neglected from being kicked out of school.  She liked the bad boy rebel bit in me which was really nothing more than being pissed at a crap secondary school with dysfunctional teachers.Without her I would never have achieved professional level medical and mountain qualifications.

The Hump Bridge and still waters below

The thread throughout all my life in one way or another has been fishing and in particular the River Coe, who's flow has served as a metaphor for much of my life. Steady, placid, reflective, angry, raging, unclear.  I always liked Neil Gunn's book "Highland River" but only in later life when reading it again did I truly understand it as a "Quest" and how much it resembled my own life.  

Looking up "The Strath"

I had a truly lovely walk up the river today following a salmon which has a very distinguishing mark on it's nebb (nose).  Having watched it from the sea pool weeks ago, it was good to see it again having moved upriver again to another pool.  It was sitting quietly in a spot where an old local poacher "Willie the Bridge" would show me fish.  Willie is gone and so is his Rabbit snare and the need to take a fish, so it was safe lying there just waiting.  It will wait until the next fish comes to that spot then will move upriver again to another lay up. Up river there are places where a fish might lay for two months conserving its precious fat and red carotenoid energy supply until the next and final urge to reach home kicks in.  Marvellous resilient creatures that we should respect and take from only with care.

The Celtic symbol of knowledge and inheritor of Solomons wisdom lays waiting

If I might borrow again from Neil Gunn, who by the way is no relation, just imagine a nice day ambling up the river with a camera thinking of "The Atom of Delight".

House Martins? or Swifts?  have made burrows for nesting in the fallen river bank

The ever changing river course

Click the images for a larger size

Top to Bottom on Central Grooves

Mid 1980’s in Glencoe Scotland. As a young rescuer under the wing of “the old fox” mountain and rescue legend Hamish MacInnes, sometime all we learned as his apprentices were put to good use. This is just such as tale.

Fiona my wife and I had recently moved back into Glencoe village from Duror, a small village 7 miles down the road. A summer day and Fiona is away and most of the climbing stars of Glencoe Mountain Rescue are away in the Swiss alps with the local rescue team leader and legend “The Fox” Hamish MacInnes, working safety cover on a big film project called “5 Days One Summer” starring Sean Connery.  Many of the same folk from the Glen who worked with him on “The Eiger Sanction”. Ian Nicholson and Dave Bathgate two Scottish climbing legends had recently bought the Kingshouse Hotel a famous mountaineering base. Lochaber Mountain Rescue stalwart Willie Anderson is painting walls for beer at the hotel. The hotel is old and needs a bit of work.

The house phone rings at about 2pm on a nice sunny August day.  "Its Doris here Davy, there is a rescue call out on Stob Coire nan Lochan for a fallen climber". I can’t get many folk as a lot are away”. I ask her to keep trying to get together enough for a rescue party while I get some technical and medical gear together.  A Police 4x4 pulls up outside my house and toots its siren and Stewart Obree one of the local constables is there to offer me a lift to the pipers lay bye a place where helicopters can land and a guy with bagpipes busks for cash. Stewart has already asked for a helicopter and Search and Rescue 134 - a Wessex from RAF Leuchars is on its way.

We arrive at the pipers lay bye and I get information from a witness that someone is hanging free, half way up the cliff and a woman holding the rope is screaming.  I get news that the main rescue vehicle has been picked up and Richard Greive and Hughie MacNicoll who owned Mountain Technology are on the way. Ian Nicholson isn’t at the Kingshouse as he’s away with Hamish, but Willie Anderson is coming down to help. So, we have enough to do the job, but only just.  150 metre rope’s and technical kit is sorted out and a recently landed helicopter crew agree to take 3 of us up the mountain to fly over the scene.

We lift off, and slowly gaining height over Aonach Dubh, circle and see the climber is hanging via a single rope from a running belay 20 metres above him two pitches up in “Central Grooves” (very severe 4c or 5.9). He is hanging upside down just below his belayer and about 2 metres out, free hanging in space. So its at least a 40-metre lead fall and judging by the roll of the harness down off his pelvis and that he’s upside down and not moving it doesn’t look good for him, or easy for us. A fall factor of about 0.75 and hitting the cliff with no helmet the consequences are pretty devastating. The woman belaying appears to be held by a single nut anchor behind a very big single block of rock which looks loose and precarious, even from the air.

The aircrew and I talk over the radio and we hatch a plan. Drop Richard, Willie and I on the top of the buttress and I will get lowered down the route, make the belayer safe and get her out of the rope system for the SAR crew to winch up. We will get the climber lowered to the bottom. While we are doing rope tricks they will pick up any extra rescuers and bring them up so they can hike to the foot of the climb with a stretcher and take the fallen climber down to a good helicopter landing pick up point.

Good belays are sorted and with the difficult task of managing the unwieldy static rope Willie and Richard lower me down the shitty loose broken ground to the top of the corner and then lower me down the 60 or so meters to the incident. Loose rock, pinnacles of blocks stacked like dinner plates and lots of debris fly past me.  A few climbs up and down to get the rope directional and stop pulling rocks onto me are needed, so it’s not a quick job or safe. Some of the rocks are paving slab sized. On the way down the route I see a watch caught by its strap in a small bucket hold in the vertical corner which the climbers hand must have slid from. I see that the single running belay is an old rock peg and pretty rotten, but it held. The climbers rope is a single 9mm stretched so tight it looks like boot cord. I arrive at the belay and a very upset woman with a belay rope at its end in a Stich plate. She’s held by a single large wire nut which she is holding in place by pushing the block back as its loose. I have to spend a lot of time searching out and clearing cracks for rock pegs to hold her at a single releasable point to cut loose to  get her into the helicopter winch strop safely. Separately I have to isolate the active rope going to the fallen climber and anchor it.

Top to Bottom Lower

As it turns out I know the fallen climber who runs a climbing instruction and guiding business. She’s a client on a rock climbing course it seems. He’s dead, its messy but that can be revisited later. I get her safe and rigged for easy release. I have his rope isolated and anchored so move down to him and make another belay for me to clip into with an adjustable sling. I come off the lowering rope, lean out and hook his rope with my hammer spike and pull him in, put a sling on him at the chest and to the harness to level him out and attach the long static lowering rope I was lowered down on, onto him. Then holding his rope against the rock face I bash it with my peg hammer. One hard blow is all it takes. He gets lowered about 60 metres to the foot of the corner where rescuers and a couple of co-opted climbers have come to help. They get him off the rope and the body bagged, and I get the rope pulled back up to me and I get lowered down to the bottom and clear of the corner. Sounds easy. None of it was. Rockfall, an upset belayer who is at risk, the victims trauma and the hard physical work takes its toll.

The helicopter comes in at a hover and ever so slowly gets closer to the corner dropping the winch-man slowly down and inching into the cliff. They get to her, put her in the winch strop, knife cut my big sling that's anchored to some pegs and take her up. Very impressive close mountain flying and crag rescue by the winch-man. She gets flown down to the base and they come back up and take us all down to our base at the Pipers Lay bye in a couple of lifts. Its surreal as there are cars and tourists blocking the valley road and hundreds of folks, some with binoculars have been watching the whole rescue. Meanwhile the piper skirls away his plaintive notes and takes his coin.

Police statements are taken later. He’s being paid so an accident inquiry (FAI) is likely. Chats and a brew then down to Hamish’s barn to sort out kit and then home for the usual ponder at another person you know killed in the mountains, thinking over many “what the fuck moments” of the rescue and what you might do different another time. And many others were to come for me in the years that followed.  It takes days to come down and get rescues like that out of your head. Often the best thing is to go climbing next day. So that’s what I did. With a hangover though.

As post script. Dennis Barclay the Glencoe rescue team’s treasurer gave me a roasting for buying seven new rock pegs and half a dozen slings from the recently opened “Glencoe Guides and Gear” shop run by Paul and Ros Moore’s and charging it to the mountain rescue account. This was to replace what I had used on the rescue. As the team didn’t have much cash he wasn’t sure if there was enough money to cover it. How things have changed in Scottish mountain rescue. I often ponder that rescue was about climbers helping climbers and even had these items not been replaced (and sometimes they couldn’t be) the job would get done regardless. There was an inquiry, and someone put me up for a bravery award which I respectfully declined. The local constable being quick off the mark, good rope handling from the team above and the skill level of the aircrew (never bettered IMHO) and also climbers abandoning their days climbing to lend assistance made it all work. Climbing is about the community of the mountains and mountain rescue is just another part of looking after your own. Even with Covid 19 that shouldn't change. Am I my brothers keeper? as a human and mountaineer the answer is always yes.

Dennis the treasurer on right. Hughie kneeling by the woman. The pair either side of Hamish were lost skiers on Sron a Creise and Wull (arms akimbo) and I saw them get Avalanched into Cam Glen. Picture circa 1980