Follow up to yesterdays post on the Cairngorm Disaster. 3000 now have read the Blog thanks!

Curran bothy in the Cairngorm Plateau in summer.Photo Breamar MRT

It is amazing as this wee blog has been read by over 3000 people since it started and is picking up each day. I received 6 emails on the Cairngorm disaster, 3 from team members who were involved! It is a hard thing to talk about but it did led to incredible changes in the Mountaineering world. At this time school kids were very active in the mountains. Hamish Brown had led several groups who had climbed the Skye ridge in a day, a outstanding piece of mountaineering for the time. I myself was led up several Munros in winter at school and loved every minute of it. On that day in November 1971 things went wrong from early the trip. The group arrived late from Edinburgh and did not sort out the kit till next day meaning they were late on the hill they were not on the top till after midday, it is dark at 1600 in winter. November has limited daylight and they were caught on the plateau in a white out trying to make the Curran bothy which was just below Ben Macdui. As is well-known they never made it and bivouacked near the hut, where the other school part were, oblivious to what was happening not far away, tragic.

Typical Cairngorm weather, where the skill to navigate is essential in a white out.

  They were out in weather like the picture above, this is typical Cairngorm weather. It is a terrible story and the snow was not deep enough to dig in and there was limited shelter. The snow gets everywhere in these conditions and no one knew they were missing till Sunday night. The teams involved made heroic attempts to search in very bad conditions and they were not located till the Monday. The story is well told by the ex team leader of Braemar Mrt in his book “Bobby on Macdhui” and John Allen’s book “Cairngorm John”. As I stated before it is a tale worth telling just for the lessons to be learned, so many nowadays do not know what happened.

Roof of the Curran bothy in winter, it was usually covered by snow, look at first photo to see the depth by chimney stack. Photo Braemar MRT.

I tried to join the RAF Kinloss MRT just after this tragedy but was told no way as I was too small to join. Also I think it was part of their way of keeping outsiders out of the team after such a tragedy, it is strange how some things happen. It was not the Team Leader that told me this but some of the team who were taking the mickey at the time! I persevered and manged to join the team a few months later and end up being with Mountain Rescue for nearly 40 years, lucky man, I was determined to join the team and had an incredible time.

I have just enjoyed a game of golf at Hopeman in marvellous weather with the yellow hammers everywhere, a wonderful place to be with the sea and great views. Off on the hill tomorrow, the forecast is not so good but that may help us as we are hoping to do some navigation practice! You never stop learning on the hills, hope the knee holds up. Thanks for reading the blog!