Climbers’ fight to survive after being buried by avalanche

TWO British climbers caught in a deadly avalanche 19,000ft up a Pakistani mountain have told how they fought to survive after being buried under 6ft of snow.

Timothy Miller ripped his way out of their buried tent with his teeth and battled to the surface before digging to save the life of Bruce Normand, his trapped companion.

The men, both from Glasgow, last night spoke for the first time of the avalanche on Ultar Sar, which killed the other member of their party, Christian Huber, from Austria.

Mr Huber had managed to unzip the tent door, but had then suffocated.

Once clear of the buried tent, the two men were left in a snowstorm in only their underwear and had to dig out their kit to avoid perishing.

Mr Miller, a 21-year-old geology student, and Mr Normand, a 51-year-old physicist, then spent two days in their broken tent waiting for the weather to ease before they were lifted to safety by a Pakistani military helicopter.

The experienced mountaineers were climbing the 24,239ft peak near Hunza when, on June 27, the weather turned much worse than forecast.

At just over 19,000ft, they settled in to wait for a break so they could go back down, digging a platform into the snow for their three-man tent.

But two days later, the small avalanche hit, burying them in 6ft of snow.

Mr Normand said: “Tim was the real hero. I had a hand up a semi-airhole and was still able to wriggle it a bit, but was less than semi-conscious.

“I think I was revived by his finding my hand rather than anything it was doing on its own.”