A 23-year-old climber who died after falling 180 metres from a mountain ridge in Wales as he climbed with two friends was “extremely unfortunate”, mountain rescuers have said. The man, from Yorkshire, was ascending Y Gribin in Snowdonia or Eryri national park in north Wales at 5pm on Saturday when a handhold he was using to pull himself up broke, causing him to fall down the mountainside. Mountain rescue teams were called to the scene between the 1,000-metre (3,280ft) Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach peaks and had recovered the man’s body with the help of a coastguard helicopter by Sunday afternoon. Chris Lloyd, the chair of the Ogwen Valley mountain rescue organisation (OVMRO), was part of the rescue effort and said the incident was a “tragic accident and very, very unfortunate”. Lloyd said: “He disappeared into the cloud below, falling a good distance down some very steep and nasty ground. “His two colleagues saw him go so they tried to scramble to the edge to see where he had gone and climbed down quite a bit. It was becoming really difficult ground and they called for him but there was no response. “It is just a tragic accident and very, very unfortunate. The lads have not done anything wrong. This rock just came away in his hand. It is just so sad.” A total of 12 OVMRO rescuers searched for the man’s body, which was found in the darkness shortly after 9pm with no signs of life. Cloudy conditions, regular rockfalls and widespread ice in the valley where the man’s body lay meant the rescuers could not attempt to evacuate the man’s body until Sunday morning. Clearer weather then allowed volunteers to carry his body on a stretcher down steep, boulder-strewn terrain for 300 metres to a waiting Caernarfon coastguard helicopter that then took the body to an undertaker. Lloyd added: “They were three young men. They have done a lot of hillwalking together and were well-equipped and had all the right kit. “It is not difficult at all but there is loose rock up there, there’s no doubt about that. There were definitely good patches of ice. It was just thin layers of it. You couldn’t really see it and you couldn’t tell whether it was wet rock or ice and it is easy to be caught out.” Y Gribin is a grade one ridge, meaning it is one of the least difficult.