Buttress (V.Diff.) solo in June 1902, his outstanding eponymous Arete (Severe) two days later on North-East Buttress with William and Jane Inglis Clark, and the first winter ascent of Green Gully (IV,4) in 1906. The latter ascent, with a Swiss alpinist called Eberhard Phildius, was barely recognised in a later guidebook, as he had not climbed the rocks of the Comb on the left, but had instead followed snow and ice in the gully. Indeed, Raeburn's ascent was completely forgotten by 1937, when J. H. B. Bell made the second winter ascent, thinking it was the first. Of Phildius himself little is known; he was almost certainly present in Fort William to meet up with another SMC member, the Rev. A. E. Robertson, as Phildius was involved in the Youth Christian Movement. On Buachaille Etive Mòr in Glen Coe, Raeburn made the first three ascents of Crowberry Gully, including a wintry 1909 ascent, and the second ascent and first Scottish ascent of Crowberry Ridge Direct (1902), then the hardest rock climb in Scotland. His style of rock climbing was very muscular; he held himself close to the rock, while his particular attention to the exact times of ascents could frequently drive his companions to exasperation. There is a humorous reference to this: when one fellow SMC member climbed a new route left of Raeburn's Arete on Ben Nevis he called it "Newbigging’s 80-Minute Route", this being an echo of "Raeburn’s 18-Minute Route" climbed the previous year on the same buttress. In Easter 1920, during the SMC Meet at Fort William, Raeburn made what perhaps his finest winter ascent in Scotland – the first of Observatory Ridge on Ben Nevis. With fellow members Mounsey and Goggs, and using a 100 ft rope, the three finished the route in just under six hours, with one long ice axe each and no crampons. Europe From 1902 Raeburn climbed without guides, and he joined the Alpine Club in 1904. In the Alps he recorded fine climbs, including the first British guideless ascent of the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn in 1906, the ascent of the north face of Monte Disgrazia in 1910 with his friend Willie Ling, the first solo traverse of the Meije, as well as first ascents in Norway and the Caucasus. He made two expeditions to the Caucasus, in 1913 and 1914. During the first his party made first ascents of