In November1971, six fifteen-year-old Edinburgh school students and their two leaders were on a navigational expedition in a remote area of the Scottish mountains when the Cairngorm Plateau disaster (also known as the Feith Buidhe disaster) occurred. They adopted their emergency plan and headed for the Curran shelter when the weather deteriorated, but they were unable to reach it and were stranded for two nights on the high plateau in a blizzard. Exposure claimed the lives of five children and the leader's assistant. With severe hypothermia and frostbite, a sixth student and the group's leader survived the ordeal.