King Charles III, 77, began his summer holiday at the Castle of Mey in Scotland, the former home of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. During the first days of his stay, he attended an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Assynt Mountain Rescue Team.
At the meeting, His Majesty, who is patron of the Braemar Mountain Rescue Service, recalled the 1988 tragedy on the Swiss piste. Back then, the King narrowly escaped an avalanche, while his closest friend and former equerry to the Queen, Major Hugh Lindsay, died.
The King spoke of his own near-death experience in the context of the dangers that the mountains pose. He said it was “a near disaster.” Clearly, after all these years, it is still fresh in his mind. But it gave him an idea of the value of our work and the dangers we face,” said Ben Dyson, head of the Scottish rescue team, after meeting with the monarch.
The story, which was first told by the monarch, was widely discussed in the media in 1988, and was later adapted for the screen in the TV series The Crown.
The King, then Prince Charles, was skiing off-piste with his company above Klosters in Switzerland when a snow torrent began to descend down a very steep slope. Everyone except Hugh Lindsay and his girlfriend Patricia Palmer-Tomkinson managed to avoid being hit by the avalanche. The skiers found themselves trapped in the snow. And although Charles and the rest of the group immediately began digging them out, it ended tragically. Lindsay died upon arrival at a hospital in nearby Davos, where he was airlifted. Patricia suffered broken legs.
According to eyewitnesses, including the pilot of the helicopter that evacuated Charles from the slope, the prince was “in tears.”
According to a June 1988 Los Angeles Times report, a subsequent investigation found that while Charles was not blamed for Lindsay’s death and Palmer-Tomkinson’s injuries, his entire group was found to be at fault. An avalanche warning had been issued that day, and the group voluntarily followed Charles, a highly experienced skier, down the difficult, unmarked slope.
The royals and the rest of their group cut their trip short and returned home shortly after the avalanche. Princess Diana told her biographer Andrew Morton that she took it upon herself to organize the trip because her husband was so shaken by the incident. She and her husband attended Lindsay’s funeral a week after his death, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, Prince Andrew, and Sarah Ferguson.
Despite the unanimous support, the incident was reported to have exacerbated the already serious problems in Charles and Diana’s marriage. According to Tina Brown’s biography, The Diana Chronicles, Diana not only “blamed Charles for the recklessness of choosing such a dangerous route,” but also chose to spend the following weeks with Lindsay’s widow, Sarah Horsley, rather than with her husband. This close relationship persisted for many years. Meanwhile, Charles suffered intense guilt over the tragedy. He later wrote in a letter: “It’s still hard for me to understand why I survived and he didn’t.”
