A skier was transferred to hospital in Edinburgh yesterday after falling almost 1,000ft from a Lochaber peak.
Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team was on the hill for 12 hours involved in what its leader described as one of the most difficult rescues in the past year.
The Aonach Beag operation was the 16th for the team in the past month, racking up a total of 3,000 hours of volunteers’ time.
Team leader John Stevenson said the operation was “complicated by the weather side of things and the medical side as well”.
The man had been skiing in whiteout conditions near the summit of 4,048 feet Aonach Beag when he plummeted through a snow cornice into a gully.
The skier, who is understood to be in his 30s, “suffered multiple injuries” and low cloud cover prevented Coastguard Rescue Helicopter 951 from winching him to safety.
Rescue 951 did manage to get members of the team just under a mile from the summit along with technical rescue equipment.
One team set out to climb up to the casualty while the second went to approach from the peak above the incident location.
By the time the team approaching from below the casualty reached 3,200 feet it had already decided to winch the casualty out from above rather than lowering him down.
Falling debris presented a risk of avalanche so they retreated back down the mountain.
Two team members and a ski patroller from the Nevis Range were then “lowered to the casualty and carried out first aid”.
Mr Stevenson said: “The casualty was then packaged to be winched up with manpower we set up a pulley system.
“That is very tiring because it is essentially two people – the casualty and the barrow boy as we call them, he is guiding the stretcher past rocks and the like.”
As part of a delicate operation, the skier was winched back to the summit and carried out.
He was taken to a snow groomer vehicle that transported him as far as the Nevis Range gondola, which has an ambulance car that took him to the bottom.
The casualty was then admitted to Belford Hospital in Fort William, later being transferred to Edinburgh overnight for more specialist treatment. It is understood his injuries are not life-threatening.
Two missing climbers remain in the area: Jim Stalker, 55 who has been gone since February 11 and a Polish man missing on Ben Nevis since January 21.