University of Hull student Tom Chesters killed in avalanche in Scottish Highlands

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Monday, January 21, 2013
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AllisonCoggan

A STUDENT from the University of Hull was one of four people killed in an avalanche in the Scottish Highlands.

Tom Chesters, 28, was studying a PhD at the university in Cottingham Road.

Northern Constabulary say he was living in Leeds before he headed north for the walking trip in the Highlands.

Junior doctor Una Rachel Finnegan, 25, from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and Christopher William Bell, 24, from Blackpool, Lancashire, were also killed when they were caught up in an avalanche near Glencoe yesterday, Northern Constabulary said.

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The fourth victim, another woman, has not yet been named to allow all members of her family to be informed of her death. One man escaped using his ice axe but a 24-year-old woman from the Durham area remains in a critical condition.

Andy Nelson, deputy head of Glencoe Mountain Rescue, believed the climbers fell around 1.000 feet before they were buried under two metres of snow.

Andy Nelson, who co-ordinated the rescue on Bidean Nam Bian, a mountain near Glencoe, said: “Being in an avalanche is literally like standing on a carpet and having it pulled out from underneath you. Any thoughts of trying to swim out from out of it is futile.

“They slid over some very rocky ground and ended up about 1,000 feet below, under between 1.5 and two metres of snow.

“It’s a brutal experience. There are enormous forces at work and you are being twisted about at high speed.”

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