[5] According to John Grieve, the leader of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, the nine caught in the avalanche appeared to consist of two parties, one made up of seven friends, both Scottish and English, and a pair of climbers.

[8] A fourth person airlifted to hospital sustained a shoulder injury, and the remaining five people found on the mountain were described as "uninjured".

[9] The rest of the climbers were left on the mountain for a period as weather conditions prevented the helicopters from re-engaging in their search efforts.

[11] The surviving climbers had begun to unearth their friends' bodies from the snow with their ice axes by the time the rescue team had arrived.

Fifty-year-old Jim Coyne from Lindsayfield, East Kilbride, said he and 53-year-old David Barr from Paisley, were on the mountain when a slab of snow came away from the peak.

54-year-old Tom Richardson, an experienced climber from Sheffield in England, also had a narrow escape and subsequently alerted the emergency services.