Brit bobby ‘never wanted to be hero of Himalayas’

Tearful relatives of Nepalese guides and porters wait to claim bodies at a hospital in Kathmandu. Picture: AP

Sergeant Paul Sherridan, 49, found himself in white-out conditions in the Annapurna range last week and only after he began helping a small party back down to safety did he realise that dozens of stranded and freezing walkers were following him.

“I never wanted to be the hero,” he said yesterday. “I wanted to go on holiday. I wanted to come home. I wanted to get back to work and I wanted to look forward to my next experience.”

He added: “I’m just pleased to be home.”

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Mr Sherridan was speaking as the Nepalese authorities wrapped up rescue operations in its northern mountains, saying all the hikers believed to have been stranded are now safe.

At least 39 people, including trekkers from Canada, India, Israel, Slovakia, Poland and Japan, died in blizzards and avalanches that swept the Himalayas last week, battering the popular Annapurna trekking circuit.

Mr Sherridan, who has been an officer with South Yorkshire Police for 26 years, said he was a “serious amateur” mountaineer.

He said he ended up leading his group because the Nepalese guides were badly-equipped and inexperienced. But he believes the low-paid guides were also victims. Mr Sherridan, from Doncaster, said: “I just had the ability to do something that anybody with my level of amateur ability would have been able to do.

“I don’t think I did anything special. Had it been someone else, I’d have stood back for them to do it, helped them or worked with them or just followed them. But it happened to be me.”

The officer described how he had been walking on the circuit for about ten days when he got caught in atrocious conditions on the 17,500ft Thorang-La Pass.

As he began to descend, he noticed people struggling in the thigh-deep snow and advised them to get down the mountain.

But he said conditions deteriorated and even working out which routes were uphill or downhill became difficult.

Mr Sherridan said the wind was so bad his guide’s eyelids froze. “It became apparent that we were descending into worsening conditions,” he said. “The sky was as white and grey as the ground and everything was featureless. The wind was so ferocious nothing could be heard. Imagine having a hairdryer blowing into your ears and someone jet-washing ice-cold water into your face and the spin drift of the snow blowing around causing disorientation.”

He said he joined a group that was descending but “to my horror, I realised that these people were dropping off one by one”.

He added: “As the weather worsened, people disappeared in front of me.

“Some of the people were just walking aimlessly in the wrong direction and I was horrified. That was the point that I saw this guide that I felt was the person who might help save me and might save other people.” He described how he reassured the guide and they eventually spotted a navigation pole as they scoured the featureless landscape. “At the point, I realised that was the way we were going to be saved,” he said.

But after two hours of walking through snow, he thought he was at his physical limit and finding it difficult to breathe.

Mr Sherridan said he stopped for a rest and told the guide to go ahead and lead the group.

“I turned around and there must have been 100 plus people coming down the mountain. That’s when I realised it wasn’t just me and four other people.”

Mr Sherridan said he decided to tell his story to highlight the lack of training and equipment among many guides allocated to trekking holidays.

He said: “The Nepalese guides are as much a victim as the people they take up there.

“I am sure that there are well-qualified and experienced guides but I didn’t see much evidence of that.”