RAF leader among avalanche victims

Feb 15 2013

One of three people killed in an avalanche in the Scottish Highlands was an RAF squadron leader, Northern Constabulary has said.

Rimon Than, 33, who was based at RAF Valley, North Wales, was killed in the incident in the Cairngorms.

The three were airlifted from the Chalamain Gap area to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary shortly after 12.30pm on Thursday.

The avalanche struck as two groups of six climbers made their way up opposite sides of a gorge. One group was part of a Glenmore Lodge organised winter skills training course and the second was off-duty RAF personnel.

The MoD earlier confirmed that two of those who died were serving in the RAF. Inspector Murdoch MacLeod said: "Clearly, this is a very tragic incident and our thoughts are currently with the families of those who have lost their lives.

"It is important that we pay tribute to the work of the rescuers who responded extremely quickly to the incident and located all three climbers in a short space of time. All three were airlifted to Aberdeen but sadly they died as a result of their injuries."

Of the three caught in the avalanche, a man and a woman died on Thursday night and another man died in the early hours of Friday morning, Northern Constabulary said.

Police, Cairngorm mountain rescue team, Cairngorm mountain ski patrol, search and rescue dogs, RAF Lossiemouth's rescue team and three helicopters were involved in the operation. The casualties were airlifted to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where they later died. Mark Diggins, co-ordinator of the Sportscotland Avalanche Information Service, described the rescue effort. He said: "With an incident like this, the important thing was to get there as quickly as possible.

"People from everywhere were brought in, from Cairngorm mountain rescue, ski patrol, engineers, a whole range of people went in there as rapidly as they possibly could and worked incredibly hard, digging to try and locate the casualties as quickly as possible. A lot of people put a fantastic amount of effort in to try and get the people out."

He said it has been a "challenging" winter in the area in terms of the weather conditions, adding: "There have been violent winds, very changeable conditions and that has an effect on the snow pack. That's the situation that we had, and still have, in that there is a weakness deep down that is sort of hidden by the fresh deposits of wind-slab snow that are above that layer."