'Like A Scene From Touching The Void'

The climber rescued in the Cairngorms earlier this week after 'dangling' from a rope for around seven hours has hit the papers big time.

ICScotland reports that the Glasgow man 'feared he was going to die' and that his two climbing partners were unable to 'winch him back on to the the mountain'.

He was 'left dangling over a 500ft gully for seven hours as he and his companions waited for help in a scene rescuers said bore similarities to a recent hit film,' according to a report in The Scottish Herald. It was, they say, a scene similar to Touching The Void - except of course he was mostly uninjured, not left for dead and was well within range of a helicopter rescue rather than being forced to crawl down an Andean glacier... The paper also reports that the leader had already climbed the crux pitch of the climb before falling.

The Telegraph reckons the fall was 150 feet and that he fell past his belayers who were 'saved by an ice screw' leaving him hanging 500 feet 'above a gully'. They have a picture of the route - Kiwi Gully III/IV - as well, and proper gnarly it looks too. Apparently thin conditions made it 'at least a grade harder than normal'.

The paper reports that MRT members hauled the climbers to safety before they were lifted off by a Royal Navy helicopter from HMS Gannet at Prestwick. The MRT leader is quoted as saying they had 'no criticism of the climbers'.

The Scotsman reports that the climbers were taken to Glenmore Lodge, asked for their names not to be made public and left the area shortly afterwards. Windchill made for effective temperatures of -19 C adds the paper.

The Times has a neat drawing of the helicopter in case you weren't sure that they look like and a nice line in dramatic prose, the belayers, it says 'clung to an icy rock face at 2,500ft as their stricken companion hung beneath them. All they could see was his head torch shining in the darkness and they had to shout down at intervals to make sure that he was still alive.'

It was clearly a bit of an epic, but good to see that everyone emerged mostly unscathed - the faller apparently injured his ankle - and hats off to the rescue team and helicopter boys for a job well done.

We give the Telegraph top marks for straightforward reporting and The Times a special prize for histrionics...