page_title: Cairngorm Plateau disaster
section_title: Trails and buildings in the Cairngorms
hierarchical_section_title: Cairngorm Plateau disaster / Cairngorms / Trails and buildings in the Cairngorms
caption_attribution_description: English: Top chairlift station, Cairn Gorm 1975
context_page_description: The Cairngorm Plateau disaster occurred in November 1971 when six fifteen-year-old Edinburgh school students and their two leaders were on a navigational expedition in a remote area of the Scottish mountains. When the weather deteriorated they adopted their emergency plan and headed for the Curran shelter, but they failed to reach it and became stranded for two nights on the high plateau in a blizzard. Five children 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 tragedy, also often called the Feith Buidhe 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.
context_section_description: 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 there are no paved roads over the Speyside–Deeside watershed and the passes are impossible even for four-wheel drives. 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 mid summer. This route has a total ascent of about 670 metres (2,200 ft) between habitation at Coylumbridge in Speyside and Linn of Dee. At about the same time that droving was dying out towards the end of the 19th century, 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 these 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 rugged 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 and on the road between Aviemore and the ski centre. In 1959 this moved to a purpose-built centre nearby which became the Scottish Centre for Outdoor Training – adventure education was being officially encouraged at the time. The centre provided (and 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. These could often become buried in snowdrifts but they attracted hikers and campers. The Curran shelter was of metal covered with boulders, and had a floor area 4 by 2 metres (12 by 7 ft) and it was beside Lochan Buidhe, the highest standing water in Britain.  Because it would attract inexperienced walkers, the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland and Adam Watson wrote to the Nature Conservancy pointing out the danger of a shelter in this location but nothing was done about the matter.
caption: Cairn Gorm top chairlift station, 1975
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