Father and son cheat death in avalanche

But the teenage Gordonstoun pupil instead had a brush with death after being thrown hundreds of feet down a mountainside by an avalanche.

It was the first winter climb for the 18-year-old, who has been hillwalking since he was seven. His father, David, who is a teacher at Gordonstoun, yesterday told how he shouted to his son to run for his life after seeing the avalanche hurtling towards them.

The pair were engulfed in tonnes of snow but escaped death after running a few steps towards safety during the ordeal, in the northern corries of the Cairngorms on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Monteith, 51, of Duffus, Moray, said: "We were unlucky to be avalanched, but lucky to have survived."

The father-of-four, who has been teaching geography at Prince Charles’ former school for 13 years, is recovering in hospital with a broken pelvis and cuts to his head.

He added : "We were at the foot of a fairly standard Grade One snow climb called Jacob’s Ladder, getting kitted up before going up to the base of the gully and assessing the route ahead.

"There is a fairly steep pitch at the top and a cornice at the top, and it may have been snow dislodged by another climber that set off our avalanche.

"We had just taken our sacks off and were assessing the situation when I looked up and heard a crack and saw the avalanche release - it was a soft slab avalanche - and I yelled to Alasdair ‘Run right!’, so we did.

"We managed to take two or three steps right and this put us towards the edge of the avalanche."

Mr Monteith said he was knocked over and rolled several times before hitting his head and lower body on rocks.

He said: "I then thought, ‘right, I am in the snow here, so I’ve got to start swimming to try to get closer to the edge’, which I did. Then I was spat out on to rocks and to my relief wasn’t buried. I looked up and Alasdair was there, also on the surface only a few metres from me."

He added: "When they were putting me on the stretcher I could see that the heaviest part of the avalanche had just missed us, so the two or three steps to the right saved us from worse damage. "

Alasdair, a senior pupil at his father’s school, said: "I was facing the other way and didn’t see the avalanche, but heard my dad shout a warning.

"I thought I wasn’t going to move at first, but I did. Then I was hit by a big chunk of snow and toppled over. When I eventually stopped tumbling down the gully I saw that Dad was on the surface near me but seemed injured, so I started shouting ‘Help’.

"I am very sore and stiff, but this will not put me off climbing again, and my mother is OK about that too. It was quite an interesting experience being strapped to a stretcher and winched up to the helicopter because you are spinning round and round."

Mr Monteith said it was fortunate that instructors from Glenmore Lodge Outdoor Training Centre and two members of sportscotland Avalanche Information Service were nearby to give First Aid and radio the emergency services.

"They were really terrific, very professional," he said .

An RAF Lossiemouth Sea King rescue helicopter was scrambled and both were winched into the aircraft and flown to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.

Mr Monteith, a former Flight Lieutenant in the RAF Regiment with 35 years climbing experience, said he had been avalanched once before in the Snowdonia mountains, in north Wales, and had been close to a further three snow slides.

The last time he was in a Sea King was three years ago when he and a friend volunteered to help RAF Kinloss mountain rescue team look for two mountaineers lost in the same mountains.

The Scottish Avalanche Information Service had issued a category two warning - or a "moderate" risk - for the northern Cairngorms on Tuesday. This had been downgraded from Monday’s category three warning of "considerable" risk. The service issues advice based on a scale from one, which is "low", to five, which is "very high".