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Snowboarding music boss dies in blizzard
Jack Lefley and Mark Prigg3 Mar 2009
A BRITISH snowboarder has died in the resort of Verbier in the Swiss Alps.
Rob Williams, who founded online music equipment retailer Dolphin Music, went missing with friend Jason Tavaria while on a holiday with Michelle Dewberry, the winner of the second series of TV show The Apprentice.
It is thought that Mr Williams and Mr Tavaria, both 29, had gone off-piste yesterday when they became separated from fellow snowboarders and got into difficulty.
A search and rescue operation was launched and friends of the pair appealed for help in finding them on Twitter.
Rescuers were forced to search on foot as blizzard conditions prevented a helicopter from being launched.
Mr Tavaria managed to send a GPS satellite navigation signal from his iPhone which pinpointed his location and he was found in good health six hours later. Mr Williams's body was discovered by search teams late last night shortly after they found his mobile phone.
Local police confirmed that he had fallen 66 feet onto a bed of rocks.
Mr Williams, of Liverpool, had left for the snowboarding holiday with the group of internet entrepreneurs on Saturday. When the pair went missing the rest of their party began appealing for Mr Williams's mobile phone number on Twitter.
Miss Dewberry posted an urgent appeal on the site yesterday, saying: “2 of our ski party been missing since 4pm. Conditions terrible. 1 guy found but trapped. 20 man team searching for other.”
Another entrepreneur, Alex Hoye, wrote: “Urgent: If anyone has or knows Rob Williams of Dolphin Music's mobile, please send. Mtn rescue in progress.”
Friends sent the number and Mr Hoye was soon able to relay the news on Twitter that Mr Tavaria had been found.
He wrote: “Rob's number rec'd via Twitter; Jason now found using GPS / Google maps & phone (@joshmarch org'd); still working on finding Rob.”
The party were able to call Mr Tavaria's mobile and he used Google Maps to generate a latitude and longitude of their position before sending it back to the group who then passed it on to mountain rescue.
A spokeswoman for Verbier mountain rescue said: “They had gone off piste so the police were also involved in the search.”
The Foreign Office would not comment on the reports.
