A man who survived a huge avalanche in which eight of his friends were buried alive has described the decision to leave them behind as 'gut-wrenching'.
Jeff Adams was snow-mobiling with a group on Sunday afternoon east of Vancouver in Canada when one of the machines became stuck.
As they battled to release it, an avalanche rocked the mountainside and buried seven of them in snow.
The other four started to help them out but as they did so, another stronger avalanche swooped down and covered them all in 15ft of snow.
Survivor: Jeff Adams, third from left, with his wife and father was among the 11 hit by avalanches. Only he and two others emerged alive
Fighting back tears, Mr Adams described how he and the two others who survived managed to dig themselves out with their bare hands.
'I managed to pull to the surface. When I opened my eyes, I managed to see daylight," he said.
'I was already choking. I took a few breaths, after a few minutes of struggling, I got myself out.
'I looked around and realized there wasn't anyone else. I couldn't see any sleds so I yelled, someone yelled back and that's when I went and found Jeremy (Rusnak).'
Without gloves or equipment, which were lost in the snow, Mr Adams dug out his friend with his hands.
After a third avalanche missed them, the two friends dug out another of their group, James Drake.
But in a scene reminiscent of the story behind hit film Touching the Void, the three then decided they had to leave the rest behind or risk their own lives again.
Search: Rescue workers board a helicopter as they set off to find the bodies of the group who were swept away by the avalanches
'It was unsafe to go in there and that's when we had to make the gut-wrenching decision to leave our eight friends and start walking off the mountain,' he said.
'After we walked for 10 minutes or so, I contemplated going back. As I turned to look at the mountain, the whole thing came burying down so we decided our best bet was to keep walking."
The three were eventually rescued by helicopter and their friends were found dead later, their bodies scattered over an area the size of a football field.
Mr Adams went back with the search team as they looked for bodies, to see the site again.
He said: 'It was very tough to look at the scene, to see how deep some of my friends were buried, to realize how close they were to the spot that I was.'
Survival: A scene from Touching the Void, a documentary based on the real life story of a climber who left his friend behind when he fell down a crevace
The loss of the eight men, all lifelong friends and experienced outdoorsmen, devastated their nearby town of Sparwood, population 4,000.
'This is a sorrow that flows like the Elk River. We all feel it,' said Pastor Shawn Barden of Fernie Baptist Church during a memorial service.
Mr Adams added: 'They died doing what they love.'
The heart-breaking choice he had to make echoes that from the documentary Touching the Void, which is based on a real-life story.
Climber Simon Yates was forced to cut the rope linking him to friend Joe Simpson after Joe fell over the edge of a cliff in the Peruvian Andes.
Unable to hold on any longer, he knew that if he did not slash the line between them that they could both fall to their deaths.
Miraculously, Simpson survived despite being seriously injured and managed to make his way back to camp.
Their journey was catalogued in Simpson's book Touching the Void which was later made into a film.Original here
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