The Cairngorm Plateau disaster, also known as the Feith Buidhe disaster, occurred in November 1971 when six fifteen-year-old students from Edinburgh's Ainslie Park High School and their two leaders embarked on a two-day navigational expedition in a remote area of the Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands.
While the group was on the high plateau, the weather deteriorated and so they decided to head for the Curran shelter, a rudimentary refuge. When they failed to reach it, the group became stranded in the open for two nights in a blizzard. Five youths and the leader's assistant died of exposure. A sixth student and the group's leader survived the ordeal with severe hypothermia and frostbite. The disaster is regarded as Britain's worst mountaineering accident.
A fatal accident inquiry led to formal requirements being placed on leaders for school expeditions. After acrimony in political, mountaineering and police circles, the Curran shelter was demolished in 1975.
The Cairngorms are a mountainous region of Scotland that are named after the 1,245-metre (4,085 ft) Cairn Gorm Mountain, which overlooks Aviemore, the main town in the area. 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. Between two of the valleys, the Lairig Ghru and the Lairig an Laoigh, extends the Cairngorm Plateau of granite boulders and gravel where Cairn Gorm itself and the 1,309-metre (4,295 ft) Ben Macdui, the highest mountain in the Cairngorms and the second-highest in the British Isles, are the main summits. The edges of the plateaux are in places steep cliffs of granite and excellent for skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing.
Their height, distances and severe and changeable weather make the Cairngorms the most challenging range for climbers in the United Kingdom. Snow can fall at any time during the year, and snow patches can persist all summer. For snow and ice climbing, the area is the most dependable in Britain.
The plateau area has a subarctic climate and supports only sparse tundra vegetation. 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. 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. Even when no snow is falling, the wind can whip up snow on the ground to produce whiteout conditions for a few metres above the surface, and snowdrifts can build up rapidly in sheltered places. Gravel can be blown through the air, and walking can be impossible. 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. On 20 March 1986, a wind speed of 173 mph (278 km/h) was measured at Cairngorm summit weather station.
Trails and buildings in Cairngorms
The valleys between the individual plateaux were used as drove roads by cattle drovers, who built rough protective shelters for their arduous journeys. Even today, between the Pass of Drumochter and the Lecht there are no paved roads over the Speyside–Deeside watershed, and the passes are impossible, even for four-wheel-drive vehicles. 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. The route has a total ascent of about 670 metres (2,200 ft) between habitation at Coylumbridge in Speyside and Linn of Dee. 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. In modern times, the bothies have been taken over by the Mountain Bothies Association for use by trekkers and climbers to provide shelter and rough sleeping accommodation.
Starting in 1960 an area in the Northern Corries between Aviemore and Cairn Gorm was developed for alpine skiing. A road was constructed to an elevation of 650 metres (2,130 ft) in Coire Cas where a ski centre was built and ski lifts and tows were installed, one going up to a new restaurant, the Ptarmigan, at 1,080 metres (3,540 ft). In good weather it was an easy walk from there to the Cairngorm Plateau.
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. In 1959, it moved to a purpose-built centre nearby (later the Scottish Centre for Outdoor Training, which provides training for leadership in mountaineering), and staff were on the spot to help in mountaineering emergencies.
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. They could often become buried in snowdrifts but they attracted hikers and campers. 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. 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.
Mountain rescue in the central Cairngorms was then the responsibility of the Scottish North Eastern Counties Constabulary. The mountain rescue teams consisted entirely of unpaid civilian volunteers and were co-ordinated by the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland, with the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) being the first to be called on for assistance on the Cairngorm Plateau. They, in turn, could request helicopter support from RAF Kinloss. The Braemar MRT and Kinloss RAF MRT would also attend if there was a major incident, or if the location for the rescue was uncertain.
In November 1971, a party of 14 students from Ainslie Park School, in Edinburgh, was staying with three leaders at Edinburgh Council's Lagganlia outdoor training centre in Kincraig. In overall charge was the 23-year-old Ben Beattie, the school's instructor in outdoor education with the Mountain Instructor Certificate, who had quite extensive mountaineering experience, but his experience in the Cairngorms in winter was very limited. 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. She had less overall mountaineering experience, but she had twice been in the Cairngorms in winter. Accompanying them was Shelagh Sunderland, aged 18, who had just started as a Lagganlia volunteer trainee instructor and had no experience in the Cairngorms.
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. Because they were very late in starting (it was almost 11:00 when they left Lagganlia), they used the Cairngorm ski lift to get close to the plateau, and as had been planned they separated into two groups: the more experienced group, made up of mostly boys and led by Beattie, set off and was followed by the less experienced group of four girls and two boys and their two female guides, Davidson and Sunderland. After crossing the plateau, both groups were to descend to the Corrour Bothy, at a much lower level in the Lairig Ghru, where they would spend the night. Sunset was just before 16:00. The Davidson group would then return along the Lairig Ghru, while the Beattie group would return by traversing Cairn Toul and Braeriach on the far side of the valley. In case of emergency, each group was to go to the Curran shelter, high on the plateau. That plan had been approved in advance by the head of Lagganlia, John Paisley, who could forbid unsuitable expeditions.