Cairngorm Plateau disaster
The central region is an area of high granite plateau at about 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) and is deeply dissected by long glacial valleys, which run roughly from north to south.
Their height, distances and severe and changeable weather make the Cairngorms the most challenging range for climbers in the United Kingdom.
[7] The shattered terrain is more like the high ground in the arctic regions of Canada or Norway than the European Alps or North American Rocky Mountains.
[8] The weather often deteriorates rapidly with elevation, so even when there are moderate conditions 150 metres below the plateau, the top can be stormy or misty and there can be icy or powdery snow.
[9][10] Scottish mountaineer Adam Watson explained how gale conditions can be extremely challenging on the plateau and make it difficult, if not impossible, to walk, see beyond a few feet, breathe and communicate with other party members.
[note 2][13][14] The valleys between the individual plateaux were used as drove roads by cattle drovers, who built rough protective shelters for their arduous journeys.
The Lairig Ghru pass between Speyside and Deeside is about 19 miles (30 km) long and reaches its greatest height at Pools of Dee at 810 metres (2,660 ft), where the water may be frozen over even in midsummer.
[15] Towards the end of the 19th century, as droving died out, deer stalking estates were flourishing and so the shelters were developed into bothies to provide improved, though still primitive, accommodation for gamekeepers.
[18][note 4] After the Second World War, the Scottish Council for Physical Recreation established Glenmore Lodge, beside Loch Morlich, on the road between Aviemore and the ski centre.
[19][20] In the 1960s, a military group erected, without permission from the local authorities, the St Valery, El Alamein and Curran shelters on the Cairngorm Plateau.
[21][25][28] The Curran shelter was of metal covered with boulders, had a floor area 4 by 2 metres (12 by 7 ft) and was beside Lochan Buidhe, the highest standing water in Britain.
[29][30][31] Predicting that it would attract inexperienced walkers, Adam Watson and the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland wrote to the Nature Conservancy to point out the danger of a shelter in that location, but nothing was done about the matter.
Also on the expedition was Beattie's girlfriend, 21-year-old Catherine Davidson, who was a final-year student at Dunfermline College of Physical Education and was approved by the school to help run the mountaineering club.
[38][39] On Saturday, 20 November, the party set off on a two-day navigational exercise to cross the Cairngorm Plateau from Cairn Gorm south to Ben Macdui.
Davidson, worried that her group would not be able to find the shelter in white-out conditions (she knew that it could become completely covered in snow), decided on a forced bivouac out on the plateau.
[44] John Duff, the leader of the Braemar MRT, later considered that to be a serious mistake: "to attempt a winter bivouac, in a storm, on a Cairngorms plateau, is literally a life or death decision, and a last option".
[45] He also wrote that the major mistake was even to have considered "an appallingly over-ambitious expedition for teenage children" and laid the blame on all those who had made and accepted the plans.
[47] The previous day, on Sunday, Beattie's group had great difficulty getting out of the hut because of the deep snow, and in arduous conditions, they were scarcely able to descend from the plateau.
Three pairs of rescuers were immediately dispatched from Glenmore Lodge into the blizzard and the night, and the Cairngorm, RAF Kinloss, Braemar and Aberdeen MRTs were called out.
[49] The Whirlwind helicopter had been dispatched from RAF Leuchars in Fife, and the pilot attempted to fly up the line of Glen Shee, but turbulence meant that he had to reduce airspeed to 70 knots (130 km/h; 81 mph), with groundspeed less than walking pace.
The helicopter could get no closer because when it applied power, the blowing snow obliterated vision and so one of the crew jumped out to lead it in the right direction by using the winch wire.
She was in the advanced stages of hypothermia and her hands were frozen solid, but although she was confused and barely able to speak, she managed to let her rescuers know that the rest of the party was close to where she had been rescued.
[51] By then, the cloud base had become lower, and no helicopter could get nearby, but several search teams on foot converged on the location of the catastrophic bivouac through snow sometimes waist deep.
[50] At 15:00, a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter arrived, guided by the leader of the RAF Kinloss MRT walking ahead firing flares.
At a political level, urged on by the press, there were proposals to ban mountaineering courses for children or at least to require formal certification for their leaders.
On the other hand, the Mountain Leader Training Board, composed of educators, was in favour on grounds of safety and teaching environmental awareness.
[66][67] Ben Beattie was appointed to a job at Glenmore Lodge, but in 1978, he was killed while climbing Nanda Devi East, in Garhwal Himalaya.
