A role of ice corrugation in increasing HCl coverage and adsorption energy E is studied within a simple model, involving a competition between the surface morphology eta and coverage theta. It takes into account that the surface steps create new adsorption sites and have a larger binding energy compared to the flat area. Depending on an interplay of the step and the binding energy variations epsilon(s), epsilon(b) the adsorption proceeds in one 0 < theta < 2 or in two stages 0 < theta < 1 and 1 < theta < 2. The latter is supplemented by the adsorbate-induced healing, manifested by the surface flattening at nonzero coverages. A reasonable choice of the parameters allows us to recover the experimental results, obtained for HCl on ice at stratospheric conditions. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.