RIP Chris and Busty

A lovely shot of Tom and his big brother Ben at the end of another(!) mountain marathon.

Today we got the saddest news of all when we learned that Chris Bell, Tom Chesters (Busty) and 2 others were among the four walkers who were killed in an avalanche at Glencoe on Saturday.

Chris and Tom have been part of the family out here since 2005. Many of you, like us, will have shared the very happiest of your adventures with them. They were far too young and had far too many awesome plans to be taken like this.

It’s all too fresh for any more considered thoughts than that I’m afraid. In the meantime, please share your happiest memories of the guys with us here. We’ll make sure they all get passed on to their families, for what comfort it might offer them.

We’ll start off with a photo from the night in 2009 when we all got drunk in the kitchen and decided that mountainbiking didn’t have enough annoying buzzwords, so we invented XXXC! Guys, we love you and we miss you.

Chris on ‘The Italian Job’