Esther Dingley fell 30 metres to her death, French officials say

The British hiker Esther Dingley fell nearly 100ft (30 metres) to her death while traversing the Pyrenees alone, the French prosecutor investigating her disappearance has said, adding that the evidence indicates an accidental death.

Dingley’s partner, Dan Colegate, found her body more than eight months after she went missing on the Spanish and French border. Colegate, 38, who found the 37-year-old’s remains on Monday, had reported her missing in November after she failed to check in at a previously agreed time.

Christophe Amunzateguy, the French prosecutor leading the investigation, told the Guardian that the police believed “strongly, even almost exclusively” that her death was an accident, based on where her body was found.

Authorities believe Dingley, who was an experienced hiker, slipped and fell down a sheer slope close to the 2,300ft peak of the Pic de la Glère. The hypothesis that the hiker’s death was an accident is supported by the fact that Dingley’s body was found high in the mountain.

“The accidental theory is now more than strong because the body was found directly below a kind of rocky peak,” Amunzateguy told MailOnline. “We believed that Esther would have fallen because along this wall we found items that belonged to her and they ended up at the bottom. We estimate the fall at about 20 or even 30 metres.”

He said the “exact and precise circumstances of the death” would never be known as the “condition of the body makes the investigation very complicated”. An autopsy on Dingley’s remains is being carried out.

The hiker was last seen alive on 22 November in the Luchonnais region of south-west France. She last made contact with Colegate the same day, sending a selfie taken on the summit of Pic de Sauvegarde.

Fragments of the hiker’s bones were found further down the mountain last month, leading investigators to believe her remains may have been dragged by wild animals.

Colegate continued looking for the body of his partner of 20 years after the confirmation of her death. Last month he said he had walked 700 miles searching for answers.

In a joint statement confirming her death, Dingley’s mother, Ria Bryant, and Colegate said: “We have all known for many months that the chance we would get to hug our beloved Esther again, to feel her warm hand in ours, to see her beautiful smile and to watch the room light up again whenever she arrived was tiny, but with this confirmation that small hope has now faded. It is devastating beyond words.”