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ARTICLE: A 1959 DIY Mountain Rescue on Ben Nevis, by Gwen Moffat

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 UKC Articles 03 Dec 2020

Gwen Moffat climbing Green Gully on Ben Nevis.

Author, writer and Britain's first female mountain guide, Gwen Moffat, shares a mountain rescue story showing 'how it was done before phones, satnav and choppers' on Ben Nevis in 1959, involving the late mountain safety pioneer Hamish MacInnes, who passed away aged 90 last month.

'We set our teeth and said nothing. At one point all three of the rear men, having fallen but refusing to relinquish a hold on the stretcher, were down but – like religious fanatics – grovelling our way through a boulder field on our knees. The casualty was mute: from morphine or stoicism or both.'


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 Sean Kelly 03 Dec 2020
In reply to UKC Articles:

Amazing memory recall from this incident. As with all such rescues at that time you often never heard anything about the casualty. I helped to carry a chap on an improvised rope stretcher, from high on the zigzags of Snowdon down to Llyn Lyddaw in about 1971. I remember it was bloody hard work and there were only 4 of us. Everyone else seemed to melt into the gloom. Our casualty was unconscious by the time we handed him over at the causeway to the MR who had arrived in a big army truck, but he looked in a bad way. I never did find out if he lived or died.

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