A survivor of the avalanches that killed eight snowmobilers in Canada this week has spoken of his devastation at being forced to leave his friends buried under the snow.

Jeff Adams described how the three survivors, choking, dug themselves out of the snow with their bare hands but were forced to flee the area by the threat of more slides.

They were among a group of 11 snowmobilers, all from the same tiny mining town, snow mobiling on Sunday afternoon near Fernie, in the Canadian Rockies' Elk Valley.

After one of their snowmobilers got stuck in the snow, seven of the men, including Mr Adams,were buried by an avalanche as they tried to free it.

Their four friends raced to help when a second avalanche buried all the men.

"At approximately 2.05 pm we heard a crack and that's when the second slide hit us, burying all 11 of us," he said.

He said the second avalanche, according to experts, "hit us at 150km/h (100 mph) plus ... the wall of snow was probably at least 4.5 metres (13 feet) high".

"I managed to pull to the surface," said Mr Adams, speaking through tears. "When I opened my eyes, I managed to see daylight," he said.

"I was already choking. I took a few breaths, after a few minutes of struggling, I got myself out. I looked around and realised there wasn't anyone else.

"I couldn't see any sleds so I yelled, someone yelled back and that's when I went and found Jeremy (Rusnak)."

Mr Adams dug out Mr Rusnak with his bare hands - his gloves and equipment had been lost in the snow. Narrowly avoiding being buried by a third fall, the two men dug out a third companion, James Drake.

They had begun to dig out Mr Drake, he said, when they heard the crack of another avalanche and abandoned their mate to run for their lives.

"As we were running away from James he was saying, 'Don't leave me here, don't leave me here,' and we kept saying 'we're sorry.' The slide never hit us ... and we went back in and finally got James out."

That was when the three of them made the gut wrenching decision to abandon their friends in order to save their own lives.

"We started walking down the mountain," Mr Adams said. "After we walked for 10 minutes or so, I contemplated going back. As I turned to look at the mountain, the whole thing came burying down, breaking again, so we decided our best bet was to keep walking;" he said.

The three men were rescued by helicopter. The bodies of their friends were eventually recovered after a three day search, scattered over an area the size of a football field and buried deep under the snow.

"It was very tough to look at the scene, to see how deep some of my friends were buried, to realize how close they were to the spot that I was," he said.

The loss of the eight men, all lifelong friends and experienced outdoorsmen, devastated their nearby town of Sparwood, population 4,000.

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