Slovak escapes from avalanche using urine

A Slovakian man who was trapped in his car under an avalanche, has escaped by urinating on ice to melt it. The man&mdash;who had 60 half-litre bottles of beer with him in the car&mdash;literally drank his way to safety.

"I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it," he said.

Rescue workers found the man still drunk on a mountain path in Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains four days after his Audi car was buried.

"It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there," he said.

He first planned to shovel the ice from outside his window, directly into his car, but soon realised that he would run out of room in his car before he would be able to reach the top.

Snowfalls of levels not seen since 1941 have fallen over parts of Europe over the past week. Some places have registered more than 3 meters of snow in 24 hours.