Overview
- King Charles spoke about surviving the 1988 Klosters avalanche while hosting the Assynt Mountain Rescue Team at Castle of Mey on August 1, and team leader Ben Dyson told The Times the monarch called his survival “a close thing.”
- The avalanche struck on March 10, 1988, on Mount Gotschnagrat above Klosters, Switzerland, when an off‑piste snowslide swept over a party that included the then‑Prince of Wales.
- Major Hugh Lindsay was fatally buried by the avalanche and was later pronounced dead at a Davos hospital, and friend Patti Palmer‑Tomkinson suffered serious leg injuries.
- Contemporaneous reports say Charles, a guide and a Swiss police officer raced back to dig out the victims and both Lindsay and Palmer‑Tomkinson were airlifted to Davos; the event was later described in Princess Diana’s memoir.
- The king’s recent recollection has revived public attention to the 1988 incident and highlighted the role of mountain rescue teams, but it did not introduce new factual details to the longstanding record.