Personally terribly sad about this accident. As an ex of that employ and as someone who knew the pilot, I can say I always had grave concerns about that so-called VFR route from its inception. Not a brilliant idea to put one over some of the steepest rising and highest bits of terrain in the area... At night it was just a black hill with a row of roadside lights up it. There would have been no back lighting to assess the cloud cover. Last time I was up there at night it was whilst flying an NVG SAR mission; even that wasn't easy.