TRIBUTES were yesterday paid to an "exceptionally dedicated" RAF officer who was a victim of an avalanche in the Cairngorms which claimed three lives.
Flight Lieutenant Fran Capps, 32, from Dulverton in Somerset, was killed in the accident in the Chalamain Gap area on Thursday.
She is the second of the three victims to be named after police identified the first on Friday as RAF Squadron leader Rimon Than, 33, who was based at RAF Valley, North Wales.
The third fatality was a student on a course at the Glenmore Lodge centre.
The avalanche struck as two groups of six climbers made their way up opposite sides of a gorge.
Capps was commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 2001 as a logistics officer and worked on a variety of Royal Air Force stations, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday.
Most recently she had worked with the Chinook Force at Royal Air Force Odiham in Hampshire, and she had previously served on operational tours in Iraq, the Falkland Islands, Afghanistan and Qatar.
Group Captain Dominic Toriati, the station commander at RAF Odiham, said: "Flight Lieutenant Fran Capps was an exceptionally dedicated Royal Air Force officer and logistician who was well known throughout the service for her remarkable commitment, her joie de vivre and her utter professionalism."
She was also described as an experienced mountaineer who had taken part in an expedition to the Indian Himalayas and led a group on an expedition to Mount Kenya.
The latest deaths come after four people were killed last month in an avalanche in Glencoe. Last week a hillwalker died during an expedition with a mountaineering club in the Cairngorms.
Mark Diggins, co-ordinator of the SportScotland Avalanche Information Service, said it had been a "challenging" winter in terms of the weather conditions, with violent winds and very changeable conditions.
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