I have climbed Bidean nam Bian, scene of the weekend's avalanche tragedy, only once, alone on a glorious spring morning in 1990. I climbed up the Dinner-Time Buttress, a low grade rock climb, to a gap in the north ridge of Stob Coire nan Lochan, where the snow began. Then I worked my way round the east side of the Stob, wading through snow already rotted by the strong sunshine, to the foot of a gully, in deep shadow and still therefore solid. It was my first proper snow and ice climb, Grade I, the easiest; but nevertheless a lonely feeling, cutting steps as the drop beneath deepened and Glen Coe came into sight far below, cars crawling along the road like beetles. From the top of the Stob I walked, jelly-legged now, along the short connecting ridge, pitted with the steps of my predecessors, to the top of Bidean.
Bidean is a very steep mountain on all sides, and, for those wishing to return Glen Coe but not wanting to go back the same way they came up, options are limited. The safest way in heavy snow is out north north west to An-t-Sron; but this leads climbers away from their car, and in any case it's a tedious way down, as I discovered many years later with a friend in summer conditions. That first time I went a little way out along this ridge, over the subsidiary top of Stob Coire nam Beith, and then down a shallow coire to the north. The first few feet of snow slope were steep, but it was old hard snow, not unstable wind-slab, and the angle soon eased.
By descending north at the side of the Church Door Buttress, the climbers took themselves into an area that will have been full of drifted fresh snow. It's a more interesting way down than via An-t-Sron, but in the wrong conditions a dangerous one. These poor people were very unlucky - they could have descended a hundred times and not been caught in an avalanche. But if they had stuck to the ridge they could have come down a hundred thousand times without catastrophe - the wind tends to blow snow off the exposed shoulders and ridges and deposit it in hollows and coires, where it can be dangerous until the freeze-thaw cycle cements it to underlying layers.
If it's tempting to say the victims made a mistake, looking back to my own ascent, I did a rock climb unroped; then a snow and ice climb unroped; then descended a steep snow slope, probably glissading part of the way down. If anything had gone wrong, would my family and friends have said, "He died doing what he loved"? Or would they said, "He was a stupid idiot"? I was vindicated by events; last weekend's victim's weren't. As I said, they were unlucky.
If there is a moral, it is that no-one is an experienced mountaineer at 25. Or indeed at 54.
