Sisters drown in Welsh national park after paddling fully clothed
Coroner suggested Hajra, 29, and Haleema Zahid, 25, who could not swim, may have slipped into pools on path up SnowdonTwo sisters have accidentally drowned after they paddled fully clothed...
By Nadeem Badshah and PA Media · The Guardian World
Coroner suggested Hajra, 29, and Haleema Zahid, 25, who could not swim, may have slipped into pools on path up Snowdon Two sisters have accidentally drowned after they paddled fully clothed at a national park beauty spot in Wales, an inquest has heard. Hajra Zahid, 29, and her sibling Haleema, 25, were pulled from pools on the Watkin Path, which leads to the Snowdon mountain summit. Both visited the picturesque wild swimming site and its waterfall at Eryri (Snowdonia) national park, in the Nant Gwynant area of Gwynedd, on 11 June 2025 with three male friends. The group of five, who were all students at the University of Chester, split up for privacy and religious reasons as the sisters, who could not swim, headed for a pool upstream on the Afon Cwm Llan river. The men later called out for the sisters, from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, but got no reply to their shouts and when they reached the pools they noticed their shoes and personal belongings at the side. They later discovered Hajra, a married mother-of-two, floating face down in her red dress. Caernarfon coroner’s court was told they managed to pull an unconscious Hajra on to the riverbank but they were unable to find Haleema. Emergency services were called and two members of Llanberis mountain rescue team later retrieved Haleema, who was wearing blue jeans and a black shirt, from deep water near the waterfall. Shortly after both women were pronounced dead at the scene. The assistant coroner for north-west Wales, Sarah Riley, said she found that the sisters had intended to paddle in the water. She said: “Having considered the evidence that neither could swim and that they were fully clothed I am satisfied that neither sister went to swim or enter parts of the pool that would put them out of their depths in the water.” She said one possibility was that one or both had fallen from an “exceptionally slippy” slab of rock at the edge of the pools. The inquest heard the mountain team rescuers who entered the water…