Heroic guides dig out skiers

Guides are being praised for the speed with which they dug out two skiers buried alive by an avalanche of 100 metric tonnes of snow and ice.

The first man, a 60-year-old Australian, was rescued within seven minutes yesterday but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

The second buried ski tourist was dug out within nine minutes and survived unscathed.

The surviving man has been named by the Sydney Morning Herald as Melbourne multi-millionaire John Castran, 53, and the and other tourist - who was caught in the avalanche but not buried in snow - was said to be his son Angus Castran.

The dead man's name had not been released last night.

The three Australian tourists were with two guides from Methven Heliski.

The Mountain Safety Council had issued a warning about avalanches in the Ragged Range, near Methven, only hours earlier, saying the danger level was high.

Police, the council and the Labour Department are all investigating.

Council avalanche programme manager Steve Schreiber said the group had been skiing for four or five hours before triggering the avalanche, which was about 200 metres wide.

It was remarkable the guides dug the tourists out so quickly. "It's pretty heroic to be able to have the skills to get these people out, who are so deep, and to get them all out."

'HE SHOULDN'T HAVE DIED'

Methven Heliski director Kevin Boekholt, one of the two guides in the expedition, said the dead man was buried a metre down. "He had his head up and he had no snow in his mouth. He was under the snow but there's a lot of air in snow. He shouldn't have died."

The guides had been checking the snow conditions on every run to assess safety, Mr Boekholt said.

He had skied with the dead man for 25 years. "We skied all over the world together. We hang out together all the time. He's like one of my best friends."

A mountain guide for more than 25 years, Mr Boekholt received a bravery medal from the Royal Humane Society, after he and two other guides worked in vain to save the life of Australian heli-skier Joshua Heuchan in 2004. Mr Heuchan, 33, fell into a crevasse and was buried by snow.

Westpac rescue helicopter general manager Simon Duncan said the guides used avalanche probes to search for the buried man who died. "They were able to distinguish his track marks and began probing."

He described the area the group was in as extremely remote.

Statistics showed a person buried for up to 18 minutes had a 93 per cent chance of survival.

Mr Duncan did not know what had caused the man to die but trauma was the primary cause for short burial. "I suspect there was something else going on, maybe an underlying illness related to this."

SURVIVOR TALKS

John Castran told the Sydney Morning Herald of the moment the avalanche hit.

"I was skiing down and all of a sudden the whole side of the mountain just let go," he said.

"I thought I might be able to out-ski it and ski off to the side, but the whole thing was happening so quickly and the snow went straight over the top of me."

Mr Castran said he used his tongue to push the snow away from his mouth.

Lachlan Castran, 25, another son of Mr Castran's, said from Melbourne that his father was in a stable condition.

"My mother and I are fine, we are greatly relieved," he told AAP.

"Dad is in a stable condition.

"It was a significant, life-threatening avalanche but they were rescued and got out of there.

"There was a death so we are a bit bound by New Zealand police about saying too much."

Dominion Post reporter Marty Sharpe was buried for about 90 seconds in an avalanche at Mt Olympus in the Southern Alps in 1995, when he was a ski field manager.

"It is absolutely terrifying. You can't move your fingers. You are just so compressed. You haven't got any air ... You've got all this weight on your chest and you just get panicky."

- By KELLY BURNS and REBECCA PALMER, with NZPA and AAP