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  I climbed fifteen feet up and to the right, to the foot of a shallow overhanging corner. This was fifteen feet high and the crux of the pitch, followed by easier rock to the large platform and a fine stance. I remembered that Robin’s runner had fallen off as he climbed this corner so I cast around for a better one. Classic rock spikes are not one of Slime Wall’s notable features, but at last I managed to chip out a crack with the hammer so that a single strand of baby nylon would just lie in it. Hoping it was adequate, I clipped one of the ropes into the karabiner and attacked the corner. It was typical of Slime Wall. The main face sloped gently outwards over me, while the shallow right-hand wall remained obligingly vertical. There were a few sideways holds in the crack inside the right-angled corner, and one or two little ledges on the walls but nothing much bigger than fingertip holds.

  I was nearly at the top when I realised that my hands were feeling the strain of seven and a half hours’ struggling on this cold, damp, steep, sunless wall. My fingers began to feel soft and weak, and showed an alarming tendency to straighten out when I put my full weight on them. But I just had to put my full weight on them, for I was in a sort of layback position, my feet pressing in rather than down, since there wasn’t enough to press down on, and my body leaning down and out on my arms, since the slope of the wall pushed it that way. My right hand had its fingers curled backhand against a vertical groove on the side wall, while my left hand was pulling sideways against the corner crack and taking most of my weight.

  The next move was obvious. There was no choice. I had to lean fully out on my right hand and throw my left hand up on to a ledge above me. This ledge was quite large and flat; it sloped outwards, had a rounded edge and no trace of a grip for the fingers on the inside. I could not lean out on this hold, I could only push down on it as I overtook it. Thus my right hand would have to take my full weight as I moved my foot up to a small ledge at knee level, and gently straightened my leg – leaning right out on my hand. Then my left hand could get a push hold on the ledge while I threw my right up on to large holds and could climb out of the corner to safety.

  The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that my fingers could hold out. Yet the longer I waited the more tired they became. I couldn’t possibly rest them in this position and it was even more strenuous to retreat. To have shouted to Robin would have meant psychological defeat – my fingers would have loosened at once. I knew he was watching me in any case – he had even stopped singing his usual appalling skiffle. I just had to try that move.

  I summoned up my last reserves of energy and leaned right out. I put my hand up on the ledge and moved my foot up. But I felt my hand weakening as I tried to straighten my leg and swing up gently, and then my fingers turned to putty. I seemed to be watching impersonally as I saw them straighten out and leave the rock. I started to fall. Classically my whole life should have flashed before me but my mind remained a rather peaceful blank; it was almost a feeling of relief- I had done my best and it was out of my hands now.

  The next thing I knew was a hefty jerk at my waist which doubled me up, and I found myself dangling at the end of the rope some thirty feet down, at a level with Robin but over to the right. I contemplated cursing roundly but decided it was a little melodramatic. The runner which I had spent so long making had stayed put. The rope had not broken. Robin had held me. His piton hadn’t come out. Everything seemed to have gone off classically until I became aware of a burning heat in my right leg. A quick glance down led to an instant diagnosis of broken; my foot was swinging about quite regardless of what I did with my leg. It must have hit the ledge where the runner was, for it was so steep elsewhere that I had fallen quite free of the rock and wasn’t even bruised or scratched otherwise.

  But the fates had kindly provided a nice ledge a couple of feet below. Robin lowered me to it. It was about a foot wide and eighteen inches long, and was quite unique on the face – there was nothing comparable in sight. I managed to sit sideways on it dangling my leg over the edge. Robin passed over his end of the rope and I tied it to my waistline so that I was really suspended on to the ledge from the runner and couldn’t fall off if I fainted. I had the rock behind me and to my right and the two ends of the rope like braces in front of me. I was as comfortable as I could hope to be, though a little cramped, and all I had to do was to prevent my foot swinging about.

  We shouted for help, but our cries were swallowed up in the echoes of Great Gully. So Robin tied the end of his rope to the piton and traversed off more or less unprotected over some sixty feet of far from easy rock at a considerable exposure. From my ledge one could have spat, if one were that kind of person, straight to the bottom of Great Gully, 300 feet below.

  I looked at my watch – 7.30. Then I set about examining my leg. Both bones were obviously broken clean through about halfway up the shin; I could feel the ends grinding together on the slightest provocation. As long as I kept perfectly still it only felt hot, but any movement was distinctly painful. All the rules told me I should develop shock, but my pulse obstinately refused to rise over the 100 level. Then I wondered how I was going to be got off; there was 300 feet sheer below me and 200 feet above. As I couldn’t solve that one I tried not to think of the immediate future. How long did a leg take to heal? Six weeks, I seemed to remember. I hate to think what I should have felt if I had known it would take six months! Then my foot began to feel numb and cold, so I loosened the lace of my boot very gently.

  It seemed quite soon, though it was actually two hours later, when I heard Robin’s voice from the edge of the cliff again. The rescue party was on its way. He climbed over to me and kept me cheerful till the experts arrived to mastermind the operation from the far side of Great Gully. Apparently people had never fallen off in such an interesting place before, or at least they hadn’t survived to be rescued. Splints were lowered and we fixed them fairly efficiently. The stretcher was manhandled up Great Gully beneath us with much gentle cursing. The air was ringing with Glasgow and Edinburgh voices and the hillside seemed to be alive with climbers.

  Ropes were lowered to us from above, knotted to reach down the 200 feet. I tied myself into a cradle arrangement, leaving my legs dangling. Then Robin tied another rope on to me – I don’t think he trusted my knots – and tied himself on to a third. I tied my feet together to give me some control of my right foot. Two more ropes were brought over from the side of the cliff, where there was a largish platform on North Buttress, and we tied on to them too. Then we let the top ropes take our weight, while we were pulled over and up to the platform. Robin was half-pulled and half-climbed across the face, protecting me and controlling the ropes, while I rested on his arms and fended off with my hands. It was quite a feat getting five long stretchy ropes to work in perfect co-ordination.

  Five hours after my fall I was off the cliff and safely on the platform. I could lie down at last and stretch myself again. A unique hot drink consisting mainly of chocolate had been brewed on the hillside, thanks to Graham Tiso who worked for Cadbury’s. Then I was carefully inserted into a Thomas splint, wrapped in a sleeping bag and blankets and strapped securely into the stretcher. Familiar and unfamiliar faces floated into my sight and away again – I didn’t gather who half the people were, but they seemed to be from a good mixture of Scottish climbing clubs.

  Now the real work started. Happily I had chosen a fine clear midsummer’s night, but even so the North Buttress is no place to take a stretcher down at midnight. So the route lay upwards. The technique was magnificent: five ropes were tied to the head of the stretcher and teams of seemingly inexhaustible climbers simply pulled me up the buttress. A Glasgow man was in the straps at the foot of the stretcher and he was pulled up too. He just had to walk up the face steadying the stretcher in a sort of inverted abseil. On the less steep bits indefatigable relays of climbers manhandled me up the hillside, half sliding me on the ski runners. It was a strange sensation to be relaxed and comfortable, vertically ascending the Buachaille at midnight, w
ith the whole of the Moor of Rannoch, the Kingshouse, the camp site and the Etive laid out flat at my feet in the midsummer dusk.

  I was hauled up the hill for some time, then over long scree traverses under grey cliffs, the rescuers slithering and scrabbling round the mountain until we could make our way down Lagangarbh Gully and over the moor to the road. I didn’t quite keep track of the whole journey, nor could I contribute much to the general flow of conversation of the party; the stretcher was so comfortable and so smoothly carried that I felt more inclined to go to sleep.

  The rescue party was magnificent. A better, more experienced group of climbers it would be hard to assemble in Scotland; most of the best-known characters in active Scottish climbing were there. They had been dragged from their tents or the Kingshouse back on to the hill for an exhausting all-night expedition, many without their suppers, but the tone of the party was amazing. I would never have imagined that a rescue could be so cheerful; everyone seemed to regard it as the most entertaining expedition of the season. There was a lot of good-natured inter-city banter and abuse; I gathered that one Glasgow fellow seemed to think that Edinburgh had been trespassing on his wall, and that my fall was the just and awful retribution of the gods. Another had the distinct impression that this was a god-sent exclusive scoop for his newspaper and promised me headlines next day. We all joined in with suggestions that would really impress the great British public, but I have to confess the actual result was even more sensational.

  We reached the roadside as dawn was breaking and everyone lay around exhausted, wondering whether to eat or to sleep first. Eventually they divided the day fairly evenly between the two; happily the weather wasn’t of the sort to tempt them on to the hill again. A Bedford van took me to Fort William. When we met the ambulance after a mile or two the owner of the van just persuaded it to go home again empty and very kindly took me all the way. And so, just twelve hours after I had fallen in the most inaccessible spot on the Buachaille, I reached the Belford Hospital and the friendly capable hands of Dr Duff and his charming staff.

  Sixty Years on Beinn Achaladair

  Hamish MacInnes

  These stories of Beinn Achaladair span a period of sixty years, and they are linked by some curious coincidences of people and places.

  The mountain seems insignificant enough, a well-rounded heap of grass, scree and rock in summer. In winter it is popular with hillwalkers, but not something to take a rope to, though its seemingly innocuous slopes are often subject to icing.

  Beinn Achaladair is one of several mountains which stand to the east of Loch Tulla, the large natural water receptacle on the southern fringe of the Moor of Rannoch. The West Highland railway line skirts the bottom of the face, giving it the appearance from across the valley of some great force trying to undercut the mountain. Further up this line a group of bowler-hatted railway engineers once nearly succumbed to a blizzard when prospecting the rail route to Fort William. It goes without saying that the area should not be treated casually by walkers, bowler-hatted or otherwise; winter storms can be sudden and severe.

  For the purpose of relating these case histories, we start in 1983 and go back in time.

  On 12 November of that year I went to an exhibition of paintings by the artist William Cadenhead in Edinburgh. In the gallery I was approached by a tall man who announced himself as one of four climbers the Glencoe Rescue Team had rescued a few years previously from Beinn an Dothaidh, one of Beinn Achaladair’s close neighbours. I remembered the incident well and was glad to see that he, for one, seemed none the worse for his encounter with the mountain or our team.

  The reason for my journey to Edinburgh on that cold 12 November was twofold. In addition to artistic exposure, I was also there to visit and photograph that august Victorian structure, the Royal Bank of Scotland in Exchange Square. This strange assignment stemmed from three Amazonian expeditions in search of Inca gold, tenuous clues about which had led me from the arrow grass of the Llanganatis of Ecuador to this edifice of prosperity. Certain documents suggested that part of the Incan hoard had found its way by a devious route to the coffers of this most Royal Bank.

  Having taken my photograph, visited the art gallery and bidden farewell to Bill Cadenhead and the rescuee, I drove back to Glencoe, passing a bleak cloud-covered Beinn Achaladair en route, and as I sped along the A82, between Loch Tulla and Beinn Achaladair, my thoughts took me back over the rescues on the mountain.

  I had just arrived home when Willie Elliot opened the door. As the Glencoe Ranger, Willie looks after the property of the National Trust for Scotland, an area embracing most of the glen. He and his brother Walter have been rescuing people off the local mountains since they were boys, though they are not climbers in the rope and ice-axe mould.

  “Aye, Hamish. There’s a call-out near Beinn Achaladair. I got a call from Jimmy Bannerman. He was contacted by the Oban Police.”

  Jimmy Bannerman was our local policeman.

  “Well, I suppose it’s back across the Rannoch Moor, Willie. What’s the score?”

  “I’ve got a map reference, it seems as if a chap’s fallen to the north of Achaladair on Meall Buidhe, but I don’t have any more gen.”

  “OK, Willie, call out the boys and we’ll meet at Achallader farm. Can you arrange for both the truck and the Land Rover to be taken over?”

  Up until 1975, Beinn Achaladair was within the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team’s jurisdiction under the Argyll County Police, but after regionalisation, it came under the umbrella of Strathclyde, a large area administered from Glasgow. As assistance from Glencoe hadn’t been requested immediately, by the time we got to Achallader farm, the Strathclyde Police Mountain Rescue Team had arrived from the Divisional Headquarters in Dumbarton, over sixty miles distant, together with police from Oban.

  It was dark by now and visibility was very poor due to cloud cover above 2,000 feet. We set off, armed with the map reference. There were about ten Glencoe Team members and Willie set up base in our truck close to the farm buildings. Achallader farm had been run by the Smith family for two generations. Both father and son were involved in these stories.

  A problem that dull typical November Saturday was that the telephones in the area were out of order. Consequently the survivor of the accident, a Dr Manson, had to drive sixteen miles to Crianlarich to raise the alarm. Apparently he and his companion, John Burke, were hillwalking when, close to the summit of Meall Buidhe, Burke’s bootlace came undone. Dr Manson strolled slowly on, assuming his friend would catch him up. On looking back, however, the doctor saw to his horror that his companion had strayed to the edge of the north-west face and fallen over. Dr Manson tried to see where his colleague had landed but the ground was steep and festooned with rock faces. He descended, cutting round the bottom of the face with difficulty. Finding no sign of his friend, he decided the best course of action was to get help. He immediately set off for Achallader farm, where he discovered that the telephones were out of order.

  This, together with the map reference, was all the information we could muster.

  We did a sweep search up the open corrie leading to the map reference; the police on the left flank, the north side, and the Glencoe Team on the valley floor and to the right, the south side. The group I was with eventually joined a police party as the valley narrowed and we stopped all together for a breather. Discussing the problem with some of them, I mentioned that the name of the man who fell was John Burke, that he worked in banking and was a regular visitor to Glencoe.

  “John Burke? John Burke?” A policeman was searching his memory for something. “Surely the signature John Burke is on the Royal Bank of Scotland notes?”

  Those who had wallets quickly took these out and looked through our paper money. Sure enough several of us had notes with Burke’s signature on them.

  As we moved into the head of the corrie, visibility became worse and our headlamp beams diffused in the dense cloud. After several hours’ search there was still no sign of the missing man a
nd we had a further discussion. The police team decided to call it a day, return to base and recommence the search at first light. They planned to stay at Bridge of Orchy Hotel for the night. I told them we would pack it in after we had completed a quick once-over at the bottom of the topmost cliffs. Most of our team are climbers so this was easier for us to do as the ground was steep and treacherous. A short time later, Peter Weir reported over his radio that he had just come across a formidable landslide, no doubt a result of torrential rains which had washed the Highlands over the previous weeks.

  I and a few others followed a weakness in the cliffs to the west of this, which leads up steeply in a grassy ramp interspersed with rocky outcrops. But here the cloud was so thick we could barely see ten feet. Meanwhile, the rest of the team in the corrie below were getting the itchy feet associated with a lost cause, so I too decided to call things off for the night. Searching in such conditions was really farcical.

  The call-out for the next day was at first light, which during November in Scotland doesn’t mean an early start. Alan Thomson, Richard Grieve and I were the first to arrive at Achallader. In the gloom we could see the lights of an RAF Wessex helicopter landing at the farm. It had flown from Glenmore Lodge in the Cairngorms where there was a weekend rescue exercise.

  The winchman came over as I pulled up. He had to shout above the helicopter’s still-running engines. “We’ve found the man. He’s dead and in a difficult place. Can a couple of you come up and give us a hand?”

  We found John Burke at the bottom of the face we had been on a few hours previously. He had plunged across the ramp we had climbed and smashed into the top of the landslide. Difficult enough to spot in daylight, he would have been almost impossible to see at night as he lay at the bottom of the rock face in a field of boulders. Apparently the helicopter flew directly to the map reference en route to Achallader farm and had spotted the dead man immediately. A fine bit of mountain rescue search work.