Inquest told of avalanche horror

Lawyer James Ryan, 36, who had rescued survivors of an avalanche 15 years earlier in Nepal, was on a skiing trip with four friends in Italy, including Stephen Wilkinson, when the pair were hit by a torrent of snow and ice.

Mr Wilkinson was buried but escaped serious injury, but Mr Ryan, of Huddersfield, suffocated under two metres of snow.

The tragedy came even though the friends’ guide decided that their original route from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland was too dangerous.

The experienced group transferred to Aosta in Italy and on March 28 they took an alternative route and began climbing a steep slope.

Mr Wilkinson, of London, said: “The next thing I knew, I heard the loudest bang I had ever heard.”

He ‘surfed’ down the mountain on a slab of ice and when he reached the bottom he was buried up to his waist in snow.

He said: “Given the size of the slab I presumed that I would die. It moved very slowly at first and then accelerated.

“When I reached the bottom of the hill I was buried up to my waist and I remember thinking I’d got away with it, but then more came and it completely buried me. I could only move my left hand, I couldn’t move anything else, I got snow in the back of my throat.”

Despite what Coroner, Prof Paul Marks, described as a “valiant effort”, Mr Ryan was buried for 20 minutes and died from asphyxiation. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Mr Ryan leaves his wife of nine years, Helen, and children Elizabeth, seven, and William, four. His father Mel Ryan, 76, played cricket for Yorkshire alongside Fred Trueman.