By Erin Bishop and NZPA  July 27 2009

Being buried by a fatal avalanche on Friday was not enough to keep an Australian father and son off the slopes at the weekend.

John Castran, a 53-year-old multi-millionaire real estate agent from Melbourne, and his son Angus, 23, spent Saturday skiing at Mt Hutt just 24 hours after a man who was part of their heliskiing party in the Ragged Ranges, near Mt Somers, died when the avalanche came crashing down on them.

 Police have named the dead man as 61-year-old Australian national Llynden Riethmuller, from Sydney.

 He was an experienced skier and a good friend of one of the guides, who had around 25 years experience in the industry.

 Mr Castran (senior) was buried over his head along with the dead man in the avalanche at around 1pm on Friday.

 One of the two guides with the party, working for the heliskiing company Alpine Guides, had just skied down and was stopped and waiting for the three clients to descend when the avalanche was triggered.

 “All I had was blackness and couldn’t move,” Mr Castran said. “I thought I can’t do anything I can’t scream, no one is going to help me. The only way I can try and survive is to lie very, very quiet and very, very still and don’t use my oxygen.

 “Then I had this terrible pang and I thought, shit, what happens if all the others have been taken down with the avalanche. “I thought Christ, if we are all down I’m here for keeps.”

 Once Mr Castran got over his anxiety he said he felt at peace before losing consciousness.

 Angus and the guide activated tracking beacons to find Mr Castran.

 They used a pole and shovel to dig him out, before the guide performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

 Mr Castran’s son was only buried to his waist and was able to dig the buried pair out within six minutes.

 Mr Castran was seen by a medic after being airlifted out of the mountains and he did not need to be hospitalised.

 “I just went down and did some turns and the next thing I know the snowfield all around me was just opening up,” Mr Castran said. “I thought oh, there’s no trouble with outrunning this and someone yells out 'avalanche’.

” Mr Castran tried to ski to safety but underestimated the speed of the snow.

 “You choke with the snow, you can’t breathe, you’re suffocating and it’s like being poured into plaster of Paris. The only thing I could move was my tongue, to push the snow away from in front of my mouth,” he said.

 “I thought: 'I’ve only got a little bit of air here, I’ve just got to use all the air very, very carefully’. So I just shut myself down totally.”

Mr Castran said the area where the group was skiing was spectacular and before the avalanche, Mr Riethmuller had said to him: “You don’t get much closer to heaven than this.”

 Mr Castran had been skiing for about 40 years, heliskiing for 20 years and said Friday would not deter him from heli-skiing again. Mountain Safety Council avalanche programme manger Steve Schreiber said the heli-skiing company had assessed the avalanche risk was high, but it was not unusual to take people out anyway.

 “I think the way they manage the situation is to alter the degree of the terrain,” he said.

 They had used the simple terrain process and were using low-angled slopes.

 The group had been skiing for four of five hours before triggering the avalanche, which was about 200 metres wide, containing 100 metric tonnes of debris.

 Mr Schreiber said it was “pretty remarkable” the victim had only been buried for six minutes.

 Statistics showed a person buried for up to 18 minutes had a 93% chance of survival. After weeks of cold southerly conditions, a change to warm westerlies triggered dangerous avalanche conditions in the Canterbury area, and the council had warned skiers, snowboarders, climbers and trampers to avoid back-country travel until further notice.