Skier Asher Cairns lucky to be alive after accident

Feb 28 2010 by Brian Daniel, Sunday Sun

He relived the accident, which happened as he was skiing with six friends. Asher did not even see the rock he hit, as there was a dusting of snow on top of it.

He did not have a helmet on but a back protector he was wearing saved him even more serious injury.

“I think in one sense I was a bit unlucky to hit the rock - to hit the rock and catapult into another rock. But I am lucky there has been no damage mental or physical other than scars.

“They are hoping I will make a full recovery, in that sense I was very lucky.

“Another inch or a little bit more force it could have been a very much more serious injury or a brain injury.

“It would not have taken much for it to go either way.”

Asher, who runs a business with Georgie letting high class chalets, said the accident could not have happened at a worse time, a day after the anniversary of his sister’s death.

“That was a bit of a shock for everyone, a bit of a drama they could have done without.”

He has been visited by family and friends since the accident, and had phone calls from people in both the UK and Switzerland.

Asher said: “It has been fantastic, the friends and family from both in the UK and Switzerland.

“I have heard from a lot of them, people who I was at school with, who I have not seen for five or 10 years.”

Meanwhile, he and Eilidh’s sister Kate Cairns, who turned 38 on Wednesday, is set to give the family some good news as she is close to having her third child.

Kate, who lives at Newton by the Sea, near Alnwick, is due in around three weeks and had to get medical clearance when she travelled to visit her brother.