Two muesli bars, some bottles of water and a mattress made out of pine needles were all that six snowboarders – including Briton Chris Holmes - had when they became lost overnight amid sub-zero temperatures on a Japanese mountain this week.

The group had climbed up Mt Kurodake on the island of Hokkaido, about 620 miles northwest of Tokyo, on Tuesday morning for a final hike as part of a five-day trip to celebrate the end of the snow season.

With emergency packs but minimal supplies, a group of nine set off for the steep hike to the 6,500ft mountain peak about 10am when the weather looked good and there were “perfect blue skies” according to Mr Holmes.

But three hours later the trouble began. The weather had turned and, with visibility gradually disappearing and fog closing in, Mr Holmes suddenly slipped about five minutes from the peak and decided not to go on.

“I’m a relatively inexperienced snowboarder so I didn’t want to go on,” Mr Holmes, 34, told The Times from his home in Hokkaido where he is still trying to get feeling back into his icy cold feet.

Three of the group continued on to the peak and returned safely to base camp later that evening. But the other six who descended earlier were less fortunate.

They men and women from New Zealand, Australia and Holland became so lost and disorientated trying to navigate their way down the steep mountainside they were forced to dig a snow cave and sleep huddled together on a bed of pine leaves as the temperature dropped below zero.

“We were advised not to go down to the left because there’s a 1000ft drop off a sheer cliff, but if you go too far right you can also get into trouble,” Mr Holmes said today, still suffering from his night in the cold.

"We were so worried about avoiding the massive drop that we veered too far to the right, so what should have taken about 15 minutes if we were going in the right direction took hours.

“We ended up going down a slope of about 70 degrees into a beautiful valley and we were standing there looking at how beautiful it was when we released if we went any further there was another 40 degree drop into a waterfall with no way out.”

The group climbed back up the mountain – sometimes through waist-deep snow - and stumbled across some fresh snowboarding and boot tracks, so they began retracing the steps of fellow mountain climbers in the hope they would come across help.

Instead, they ended up being another group of lost climbers – a couple from South Africa and their Japanese guide.

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