Unlucky prince
In 1988, Prince Charles was caught in an avalanche in Klosters. While he got away with a shock, his friend died in the snow. The accident had drastic consequences.
Michael van Orsouw
Michael van Orsouw has a PhD in history and is a performance poet and author. He regularly publishes historical books.
Website: geschichte-texte.ch
It was on March 10, 1988: After four days of cloudy skies and 50 centimetres of fresh snow, the sun was finally shining again. The day before, the royal family welcomed around 80 photographers from England, Germany, France and Switzerland on the ski slopes in Klosters – for just three minutes! Prince Charles poses in a mouse-gray, one-piece ski suit, his then wife Diana in black with narrow red and green stripes and his sister-in-law Sarah Ferguson in purple. The royal trio makes a few turns at the Salfranga ski lift, the photographers click as fast and as often as they can. When Diana plumps down for a brief moment, the hours of waiting for the paparazzi paid off. The photo of Diana sitting in the snow would go around the world.
The royal family on a ski holiday in Klosters. YouTube
The whole mountain crumbles to the valley
The avalanche caught two people of the royal group and dragged them down around 450 meters. Bruno Sprecher, a former ski racer and mountain guide who accompanied the English, acts immediately. He alerts the police, orders a rescue helicopter, rushes to the avalanche cone in order to locate and dig those buried with a search device. Sprecher finds the seriously injured woman, administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and hands the shovel to the prince, who tries to uncover the woman further. In order not to hurt her, Charles digs with his bare hands. The buried Patty Palmer-Tomkinson survived thanks to the immediate help of Sprecher and Charles.
The rescue workers find Hugh Lindsay in the avalanche almost 100 meters up the slope, but the 34-year-old major is already dead. Lindsay had previously worked as a stable master for Queen Elizabeth II and served as a soldier in Northern Ireland, Germany and Oman. Prince Charles describes him as a "close friend". He leaves behind a pregnant wife. As the rescue helicopter landed in the avalanche area, the prince is said to have sobbed and trembled, eyewitnesses report.
The prince takes the blame
But Charles also has to go to the hospital in Davos briefly and is in shock. He wants to continue his skiing vacation. Diana, who passed on skiing that afternoon, convinces him otherwise. She urges Charles to break off the vacation immediately and, out of piety, to fly back to London with Hugh Lindsay's coffin. The Prince of Wales wants to hold a press conference in London, but Diana and the Royals' press relations office convince him to only publish a message on his behalf.
Consequences for Charles and Diana’s marriage
But the accident also had consequences in the canton of Grisons. The public prosecutor's office starts an official investigation. Is the prince to blame for the misfortune, as he himself said? Is it the fault of the mountain guide who should have known the avalanche slope?
The investigation, in which the English prince also participates, takes four months. But on June 27, 1988, the Grisons public prosecutor closed the case. It argues that the mountain guide did not accompany the group in an official capacity, but as a private acquaintance. And because no one single person led the group into the avalanche slope, it is a "risk-bearing community" of which no one is to blame.
