Fifty five years ago, I would have been thirteen, I joined the Scouts, I had been in the Boys Brigade but didn’t like all the marching and keep fit. The 39th Dundee Pack were based in the city centre, loosely affiliated to the Cathedral, we used their hall and had a couple of store rooms. Meetings were on a Friday night a 19:00, there were usually between fifteen and twenty others there. The focus was on outdoor activities and at least once a month we went camping or hill walking, even through the winter. I remember once camping with six inches of snow on the ground. On one weekend either in June or July 1969, it was planned to spend the weekend in Glen Doll, around thirty five miles north of Dundee. There is an old drovers track, Jock’s Road, which goes from Glen Doll to Braemar, we were to travel up on Friday evening, walk the four miles up to a bothy, Davie Glen’s Hut as it was known then, and stay there for two nights. On Saturday it was planned to try to reach the tops of four local mountains all over 3000 feet, (Munroes), then travel back on Sunday. There were six scouts, myself, Stephen, Nicky and three others, there was a leader and his friend who was a mountaineer. We had all been hill walking before and despite our ages, we could read maps and use a compass. The bothy was a stone built hut, just off to the side of the track, it had a door, wooden and blue, now red a metal, inside was an earth floor, no windows, and a fire place. Above the fire was a ledge, on it was a bottle of ‘Camp’ Coffee, matches, powdered milk, bits of candles, a few tins of food and a can opener. Supplies for anyone stranded overnight. There was enough floor space to sleep around ten to twelve people easily. While a meal was being cooked, we were sent to gather heather, it would be used to put under our sleeping bags to make the floor less hard. Someone asked who had built the bothy, it had been constructed following a tragedy on New Years Day in 1959, five people died in a storm.
Five members of the Universal Hiking Club from Glasgow decided to walk from Braemar to meet their colleagues who would be driving the long way round by road. All were experienced hillwalkers, the party included the club President, Vice President, Secretary and the Convenor, the fifth person was a seventeen year old lad. All were experienced and were well equipped.
According to reports, the men left Braemar, having been to Mass before setting off, the weather was cold, with a mixture of rain and sleet. The were spotted by a local farmer around an hour later, the last person to see them alive. A storm set in, snowing for two days, the other members of the party were unable to reach Glen Doll, with the phone lines down, there was no way to check if they had arrived at the Youth Hostel in Glen Doll. With the weather still terrible, it was on January 4th that a rescue party set off. The body of seventeen years old James Boyle was found fairly quickly, his injuries were consistent with having fallen, however with deep frozen snow and plummeting temperatures, no one else was found in the following two days. It was felt there was no chance of any of the others still being alive.
A thaw started around the end of February Club President Harry Duffin was found near to the location of James Boyle. From where he was found, Vice President Frank Daly was the first to collapse and die. Joseph Devlin and Robert Faul were found on the 9th March. The final body, Frank Daly remained undiscovered until 19th April. Most of the bodies had been found by Davie Glen, a character who knew the hills around Glen Doll better than anyone. The cause of death for each person was listed as hypothermia.
It was suspected the party left Jock’s Road and skirted round the west side of a mountain, Tollmount, hoping to find shelter from the wind and snow, the normal route would have been to the east. Following the Glen of White Water, it would have brought them back onto the road further along. However, the severity of the weather meant none of them survived. No one knows why they deviated from the path, possibly to try to find a route where they were battered less by the weather, or less likely they took a wrong turn.
Following the tragedy, Davie Glen along with friends began building the refuge, stones from an old hut were used, however timber and corrugated iron for the roof had to be carried four miles up to the hut.
The weather on this trip was benign, however on subsequent trips into Glen Doll it wasn’t so good and myself and my companions were glad of a place to shelter. Times were different then, we thought nothing of organising trips into the Highlands to spend the weekend away, the trip would be planned using local buses, our parents would be told and we would meet up at the local bus station early on a Saturday morning. No mobile phones or means of communication, but we had maps, compasses and plenty of common sense.
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