Snowboarder's desperate text before fatal fall on mountain

A British women fell 150m to her death while snowboarding in the German Alps, having texted a companion saying she had got lost and pleading for help to come.

Local police confirmed last night that Monica Davis, 35, from Derbyshire, became separated from her husband and friends after going off the marked piste in the Alpspitz range. She fell into a canyon, where mountain rescue workers found her frozen body yesterday morning.

Once in trouble, she texted one of the friends requesting help. But attempts to locate her via her mobile were frustrated because it was either off or the battery had gone flat. "The SMS was what sparked the search, but by the time rescue workers had located the woman yesterday morning she was already dead," a police spokesman from Weilheim, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Upper Bavaria, told the Guardian.

"Evidently her mobile phone was switched off after that - it's likely that the battery was empty - otherwise it might have been used to navigate her position much earlier," the spokesman added.

She had wandered some distance from where she sent the message, the contents of which were not made public.

The fall is believed to have killed her. "But even if she had survived the fall, it is unlikely she would have survived the temperatures, between minus 15 and 20 degrees," added the spokesman.

Davis was born in Poland but had a British passport after having settled in the UK with her British husband. The couple had enjoyed several holidays in Garmisch-Partenkirchen one of Germany's most popular skiing regions. This time they had been in the town eight days. Going out on the morning of New Year's Day, she split off from her husband and holiday companions, perhaps to find more interesting terrain - despite the concerns of her friends.

The spokesman said there was no reason to think they had had a row. "What is clear is that she decided to go off on her own, and discovered that the conditions were too difficult or it was too steep. At some point she abandoned her snowboard and continued on foot."