He said: "As I descended this abyss of nothing, I realised that the people I was following didn't know where they were. It was at that point that I realised I had gone from a place of safety into an absolute position of fear and sheer terror."
The police sergeant, who serves with South Yorkshire Police in Doncaster, was among 280 mostly foreign climbers and their guides rescued since Wednesday from the range, where teams were still looking for survivors believed to be stranded in lodges and huts amid waist-deep snow.
The disaster began to unfold when heavy snowstorms hit the range on Wednesday, following Cyclone Hudhud, which struck the east coast of India. Most of the deaths happened when a blizzard hit the 150 mile Annapurna Circuit, a well-known trekking route which normally takes three weeks to complete
The atrocious weather hit a resting place 14,800ft above sea level, not far below the Thorung La pass, the circuit's highest point. Many of the dead are thought to have left the pass to try to flee the storm, only to become lost out in the open.
One rescue team travelling by helicopter found 12 bodies buried in the snow. Two of the dead were Israeli, one was from Poland, another was Vietnamese and the remaining eight were Nepalese guides and porters.
Elsewhere, an avalanche buried a base camp used for assaults on Mount Dhaulagiri, the seventh-highest peak in the world, standing at 26,795 feet. Two Slovakians and three Nepalese guides are believed to have been killed. A third incident took place in Manang district where five climbers were swept away by an avalanche. A local official said the group consisted of "four Canadians and an Indian". Another avalanche claimed the lives of three Nepalese yak herders.
The death toll could yet rise further, with bodies lying undiscovered in the snow, and the Nepalese government has announced a high-level committee with two senior ministers to monitor and coordinate rescue efforts in what is shaping up to be the country's worst mountaineering tragedy.
At least two Britons were yesterday listed by local authorities as being unaccounted for, although the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it had no reports of missing UK citizens.
One of them, Lizi Hamer, 31, who now lives in Singapore, was planning to climb the Annapurna circuit with her friend Lisa Walton, a former New Zealand Olympic hockey player, though it is unclear if they set off on the trek.
Friends of Miss Hamer, who has not made contact since the start of the disaster on Wednesday, are appealing for information on the internet. The name of the other Briton is not known.
British Lizi Hamer was planning to climb the Annapurna circuit with her friend Lisa Walton
One group of survivors claimed several of their friends were marched to their deaths by an unscrupulous lodge owner who promised to lead them to safety if they paid him £1,200, only to disappear with the money after they set off.
Eitan Edan, 31, an Israeli social worker, said four of his friends were among at least eight people who died in the incident, after the lodge owner and a porter – who subsequently also died – persuaded them to leave the lodge.
Mr Edan said: "They let us think we had to walk if we wanted to stay alive, but everyone who stayed in the tea house is alive."
The Israeli survived by sleeping under a blanket in the snow for three hours and eating a Marathon bar to revive his energies before resuming his descent and reaching the safety of the hamlet of Muktinath.
Mr Sherridan, 49, said the disaster he witnessed began when the climbers with whom he was trekking tried to descend their section of the mountain. He says the tragedy could have been avoided had the Nepalese authorities taken more account of worsening weather conditions and prevented expeditions like his own setting off.
In a compelling account of what took place the father-of-two said: "Somebody shouted – and I believe it was one of the guides – 'Move forwards! Move forwards!' But as we moved forwards, conditions worsened and we became involved in blacked-out conditions where the ground became the same colour as the sky and it was difficult to see which way was up and which way was down.
"I pushed my way forwards through the snow, gasping for air. I pushed and pushed past the people who were orderly queuing and I managed to join a group of people who were making progress that I believed to be down the hill, though I didn't know for certain."
Mr Sherridan, who as a trainee constable was one of the first on the scene of the Clapham rail disaster in December 1988, described the trauma endured by those around him as they tried to battle through the ice and snow.
He said: "There was a Spanish woman stood next to me who looked as horrified as I did and I looked at her and put my arm on her and said 'Don't worry, we're not going to die, we're going to live today. We're all going to live'. She grabbed me and we cried together in a huddle on the side of the mountain."
Mr Sherridan believes his own experience of hill walking in poor conditions with limited visibility, may have helped save his own life and those of the people immediately around him as they tried to descend the mountain.
He said: "As we looked around, there was just blankness. But fortunately there was a brief respite and I saw a pole. These poles were our way to safety. I worked with the guide and we worked together and I led the way to the pole. We picked our way down for two hours through this maze of poles that sometimes we couldn't see for minutes on end, but it seemed to bring some sort of calmness and order to affairs. My experience of walking in the hills not only saved my life, but at least 10 other people who I thought were with me.
"As we dropped and went further down, I realised it wasn't just 10 people, it was probably 150 people. I just stopped and I looked and I cried. It was around that time that I heard the rumble of an avalanche and I heard the large thunder and roar of snow falling and I just knew, due to the number of people, that there were going to be fatalities. It was horrific."
Once off the mountain Mr Sherridan rang his parents in Doncaster, Henry, 72, and June, 71, to tell them about the disaster and ask them to let his wife Lesley, a child carer, and their children, Hannah, 23, and Matthew, 20, know he was safe.
Paul Sherridan with his wife Lesley
June Sherridan said: "When he called his voice was a little shakey. We're proud of him and we are pleased that he's OK. It could have been so different. Luckily, he got in touch before we heard about it on the news, but even then, you start thinking about what could have happened. It shakes you up. I suppose he's used to dealing with these things as a policeman."
Mr Sherridan, a keen cyclist and walker, had travelled with a friend, Steve Wilson, a retired businessman, who was forced to come off the mountain two days earlier because of altitude sickness.
In April an avalanche on Mount Everest killed 16 Sherpa guides and led to a significant drop in the number of expeditions to the world's highest peak. The latest disaster comes at the height of the trekking period, when thousands of tourists head to Nepal. But the unexpected heavy snowfall appears to have caught both trekkers and the Nepalese authorities off guard.
Mr Sherridan was damning in his assessment of the circumstances surrounding the disaster.
He said: "This incident could have been prevented. If someone had taken the responsibility just to stop people going up there, I'm sure the fatalities would have been a lot less. They were herded up that mountain to their death."
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