Three climbers have been killed in an avalanche on Buachaille Etive Mor, the mountain guarding the entrance to Glencoe. Two are brothers in theeir sixties and from Northern Ireland -  Eamonn and John Murphy and one is a Scot from Monifeith, Brian Murray.

Helicopters were called to the mountain at 12.00 on Saturday (24th January) when a total of nine people, in different parties, were caught up in the avalanche. One was an RAF aircraft from Lossiemouth and the other from the Royal Navy’s HNS Gannet.

The RAF SAR helicopter from Lossiemouth took two people off the mountain and flew them to Belford Hospital in Fort William. One man was pronounced dead on arrival and the second died later. The third body was found later in the snow.

This afternoon (Sunday 25th police confirmed that there were three dead, including the two brothers.

Tom Richardson, a walker who  survived the avalanche and called the rescue teams said: ‘As I got to the top of the pass, the edge of the slope – it wasn’t corniced – broke away and we were taken down in an avalanche, some of us rode out the top of it and others got buried’.

Five others were rescued from the mountain and one person is being treated for a shoulder injury.

John Grieve, Glencoe Mountain Rescue leader, paid tribute to the team the dead men were with. He said: ‘The first two had been dug out by the party themselves. They did very well. They located one of the buried friends and started resuscitation. Then using their ice axes as probes they quickly located the second member of the party and dug him out as well’.

Northern Constabulary is advising climbers that the risk of avalanches will remain high for the next couple of days. Sport Scotland’s website is putting the risk at category four, on a scale of one to five.

The photograph, by Colin Souze and licensed under Creative Commons, shows a view from the summit of the Devil’s Staircase looking south over the east end of Glen Coe,  towards Buachaille Etive Mòr with Creise and Meall a’ Bhuiridh beyond.