A British skier was brought back to life after being buried in an avalanche for a quarter of an hour.
Rhianna Shaw, Britain's luckiest skierRhianna Shaw was skiing off-piste with a group of friends in St Anton, Austria, when she was caught up in the avalanche and buried alive.
"We went round this one bit and me and my friend Alistair were coming down side by side and he was on a snowboard and we had a minor collision and I lost both skis. It normally wouldn't be a problem but it started a bit of snowfall," she explained.
"Then the others came down and a massive ledge of snowfall broke away and it carried me down the slope around 150 metres."
Her companions initially thought that she had evaded the tumbling wave of snow, even calling her mobile to see if she was okay, but when they realised she had been buried they began searching for her frantically with ski poles.
"There was several feet of snow on top of me. You usually think snow will move but it just sets like concrete around you.
"I was absolutely frozen and I couldn't move an inch. I could just about make out which way was up as a little bit of light was coming through and I could hear faint sounds.
"All I could do was scream for help, but no one could hear me.
"They thought I might have skied off and I could hear my mobile ringing in my pocket but I couldn't answer it. It was absolutely terrifying."
After five minutes of screamnig she eventually passed out, and it was only after the 23-year-old had been encased in her snowy tomb for 15 minutes that her friends found her and dug her out.
Rhianna was clinically dead - she had no pulse and was not breathing - but CPR efforts brought her back to life, much to the amazement of medical crews who later arrived on the scene. Just one in 20 people buried alive for that long make it out, with most people dying after 11 minutes.
Mountain rescue rushed to Rhianna's aid, but it was her friends' CPR which saved her"I must have been buried for at least 15 minutes and probably stayed conscious for five minutes. I was conscious I was trapped and I would probably die," she added.
"There is only a six per cent chance of resuscitation once you are pulled out of the snow like that so I was incredibly lucky."
Rhianna, who comes from Chichester and was working in Austria for the ski season, is an expert skier who had been out at the same spot several times before.
But she admits that it will be some time before she feels brave enough to go out on a similar expedition.
"We hadn't had snow for a couple of weeks then lots came down and it was a lovely sunny day so we decided to go out," she said. "It hits me at strange times. It's like a weird bad dream. I won't be going off piste again in a hurry."
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