There were a couple of incidents over the weekend. A Norwegian man holidaying in Chamonix was killed by an avalanche on the Italian side of the mountain at 1700m in the Val Vény sector. The risk was 4 at the time.

A 25 year old Canadian from Quebec was very seriously injured at the entrance of the Canyon at l’alpe d’Huez. It is thought he missed the entrance in the whiteout conditions and fell a dozen meters over cliffs into a mountain stream. His friend climbed down the cliff face and dragged him from the icy waters passing him his dry clothes. The rescue services took the unfortunate skier to hospital in Grenoble.

Off piste conditions were pretty dreadful in St Anton, Austria last week. We had rain on Sunday 21/03 then very sunny warm days until Friday. The local avalanche forecast service gave a level of 4/5 early in the week. I stuck to the pistes all week and even they were not always safe. One notorious piste (Steissbachtal) was rightly closed all week, another piste was closed in the afternoons, but not soon enough IMHO, I saw a large slide come down over the piste whilst it was open. No one was hurt but the run should have been closed much sooner (for those that know the area it was the run down from Schindlergrat to the Ulmerhutte). The run is directly below steep south facing slopes which had a lot of snow on them. Thankfully it seems to be cooling down now so should hopefully be a lot safer.

Could be coming good for the end of season although we had a dreadful foehn on Monday in the Isere. It is currently lashing it down with snow at 1000m.

Watch out for increase in avalanche risk. On Monday at 47 year old man was caught in an avalanche on the Bic Froid near the Abriès in the Queyras. He was ski touring with 3 friends. The slide measured 250x300m. The man was partially buried and suffered injuries to his back and legs after being carried 300m by he slide. The avalanche risk was 3/5.

On Sunday a British man was killed on the Chamonix Zermatt Haute-Route on the Pointe Palette above the refuge Benevolo. The man was skiing with 5 friends, they were accompanied by a guide. The avalanche occured at 2800 meters altitude. The slide measured 400x100 meters. The man was rescued by his companions but died while being heliported to hospital in Aoste.

a little tour of the horizon taken late this afternoon looking towards the Belledonne and les 7 laux

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm580wySPSc

I think I’ve skied pretty much every slope you can see in the video.

Another 20cm of snow this morning with snow falling above 800m (causing some problems on the roads). Take care, the avalanche risk is Considerable today.