A BRITISH couple froze to death on a mountain in northern Spain after they were stranded overnight in a snowstorm while hiking.

Lost and disorientated, Robert Rippengal, 39, an experienced walker, managed to raise the alarm with a desperate phone call to a friend in England.

But terrible weather in the Picos de Europa National Park hampered the search and a rescue helicopter arrived too late to save Mr Rippengal or his girlfriend Kate Stokes, 35.

By the time the search party reached the couple on Sunday night, a day after they first appealed for help, Mr Rippengal was dead.

They had apparently left the safety of the shelter they had found and he had suffered a serious fall. Ms Stokes, who was suffering from severe hypothermia, died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital in Arriondas. The mountains of the Picos de Europa are popular with walkers and climbers but they are also notoriously prone to bad weather, in particular sudden mists and fogs.

Last week Paul Beck, 33, from South London, was airlifted from the mountains to the same hospital where Ms Stokes was taken. He had survived six days and five nights drinking his own urine.

Weather conditions in the 245-square-mile national park had been worsening at the end of last week and forecasts had predicted heavy snow.

Flights were cancelled from Santander airport, where Mr Rippengal, a Cambridge University archaeology graduate who ran his own renewable energy firm, and Ms Stokes, an administrator for a conservation charity, had arrived on Thursday morning.

Mr Rippengal’s father Derek, 77, said last night that the couple had visited the area at the same time last year, soon after they met through a rowing club in Cambridge.

He described his son as an “immensely cheerful, energetic, enthusiastic and very clever man” who would have have been equipped with ice axes and crampons. “They were experienced walkers. Exceptional snow came down. They were caught in a whiteout.

“I last saw them on Wednesday night when they came round for a drink. My last words to them were, ‘Take care. You can have difficult conditions at this time of year’.”

His son and Ms Stokes, from Southampton, had set off on Saturday morning. Bad weather overtook them above the village of Liebana.

As the snow closed in Mr Rippengal called his business partner Richard Landen and asked him to raise the alarm.

The Spanish Civil Guard Mountain Rescue team stationed in Cangas de Onís, immediately started searching. They made contact with the couple by mobile phone and were reassured that they had found shelter, a spokesman said. However, they found that they had made the fatal mistake of leaving their refuge.

Rescuers said that it was too dangerous to return for Mr Rippengal’s body, which will be removed when the conditions improve.

Mr Rippengal’s father, a former QC who was a legal adviser to the House of Lords, said that his son, who was divorced, had been in the process of selling his house in Cambridge. He was preparing to move to Cumbria so that he could be close to his two children, Sam, 2, and Eliza, 4.

He added: “Sam is too young to be told what has happened. Eliza has been told that her father is dead. Her mother said that her daddy has gone to sleep in the snow and is with the angels.”