A 39-year-old Welsh mountaineering instructor who survived a 700ft plunge on a Highland mountain spoke yesterday of his great escape – on St David’s Day.
Max Hunter escaped with a few cuts and a bruised back after a snow overhang he was standing on collapsed.
It happened on the last day of a three-day winter climbing course on Sunday – his country’s patron saint’s day.
Speaking from his bed in Belford Hospital, Fort William, yesterday, the experienced instructor said: “I can’t believe I am alive. The best feeling in the world was opening my eyes, seeing daylight and feeling the pain. It told me I had survived.”
Mr Hunter, a climber for 16 years, had been leading a party of three novice male climbers for his employers, Jagged Globe of Sheffield, when a snow cornice in the Stob Coire nan Lochan area of Glencoe gave way and he plummeted into a rock-filled gully on Sunday afternoon.
Fellow mountaineers rushed to his aid and eight members of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) were airlifted in by an RAF Lossiemouth helicopter.
Jagged Globe, a provider of expeditions, treks, climbing, and ski-ing courses, has a base in Glencoe.
Mr Hunter, originally from Swansea, moved to Fort William to be closer to the Scottish mountains.
He said: “We were approaching the end of our day on the hills and I had assessed my clients’ capabilities. My intention was to do a snow gully the following day and I went to check it out.
“My three companions stayed a little way back and I probed the soft snow with my axe to establish where the hard snow was underneath so I could look over the edge. The next thing I knew the snow gave way under me.
“It was bad luck really. But what happened after that was definitely good luck.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is it,’ and was waiting to hit rocks. But it never happened. One climber who witnessed it said there was this rush and cloud of snow, and I slid out of the middle of it at the bottom of the gully.
“I landed in the middle of a crop of boulders and didn’t hit one.
“When I landed, my senses started to come back to me.
“I knew I was in pain and decided not to move. Then I was very pleased to be able to open my eyes and focus on the people who were very quickly around me.
“I was very grateful to be in pain because it meant I was alive. I couldn’t believe it. It is incredible that I fell all that way and didn’t hit a rock.
“The medical staff were also amazed that all I required was a couple of stitches each to my elbow and knee. My back is badly bruised but I have no internal damage and no fractures.”
Mr Hunter added: “I can’t thank everyone enough for coming to my aid.”
Glencoe MRT leader John Grieve said: “He was exceedingly lucky. A lot of the fall was vertical and he ended up amid a load of boulders. If he had touched one of them he would have been a goner. It’s not something you could do again and get away with.”