Catholics mourn death of climbers killed in Pyrenees
By Mark Greaves
13 June 2008

Michael Hall campaigned 'tirelessly' for Cafod

Catholics in Manchester were in mourning this week after a couple were killed by an avalanche while walking in the Pyrenees.

Michael and Dorothy Hall, who both played for the Manchester-based Hallé orchestra, were pushed off a mountain path when a shelf of snow fell on top of them.

The couple, aged 53, were members of St Catherine of Siena parish in Didsbury, Manchester, for several decades and had campaigned tirelessly for Cafod.

Fr Bernard Wilson, the parish priest, said that parishioners were "stunned" by the news. "This is a great loss to our community and our prayers and hearts are very much with the children, Chris and Clare," he said.

Dorothy Hall, a professional cellist, was a reader and a Eucharistic Minister at the parish and had occasionally stepped in to conduct the children's orchestra.

Although Michael was not a Catholic, Fr Wilson said, he was also very much involved in parish life since the couple "did everything together".

"They were always the first to reach out when there was a natural disaster. They would be organising collections before any official word had come through," he said.

Anne-Marie Coppock, Cafod manager for Salford, said that Dorothy had worked "tirelessly" to raise money for the aid agency. "Part of her legacy is all she has done to help people living in poverty in the developing world," she said. "The parish, and the whole local community, are deeply distressed by Dorothy and her husband's death and they will be sorely missed. We will remember them and their family and friends in our prayers."

The couple were on holiday in the Pyrenees for the first time and had been staying in a campsite at Luz-Saint-Sauveur, on the edge of the Pyrenees National Park.

They were thought to be walking along a path towards the French-Spanish border when they were hit by the avalanche.

A local police spokesman said it was "an extremely perilous area" and that the drift had swept towards them at very high speed.

He said that medics reached the scene as quickly as they could but could not save the couple's lives.

A spokesman for the Hallé orchestra said: "Everyone at the Hallé is immensely upset and extremely sad at the loss of two extremely talented musicians."

The couple have two children, Clare, 28 and Christopher, 25, who also live in Manchester.

Michael Denton, a neighbour, told the South Manchester Reporter: "You could not wish to meet nicer people. They were the most generous, kind, levelled people who would do absolutely anything for anybody else. They were the most genuine, non-judgmental people you could wish to meet."

He said the couple "loved walking". "All the photographs in the house are of them in the mountains, of them skiing or walking. Every photograph had some sort of mountain backdrop."