I have had complaints that we don’t post enough accounts of successful rescues. PatdGap has posted an account of the Bric Froid avalanche last Monday
Avalanche Bric Foid 29/March/2010
We decided to tour to the Roux d’Abriès and left at 7h50 under a cloudy sky but with relatively mild temperatures. The climb was on transformed snow which didn’t break under our skis covered increasingly by fresh snow which was also transforming into corn.
We climbed a goulet on foot at 2750m and 2800m then we put our skis back on to climb the upper slope traversing to the right to join the south-east shoulder at 3189 meters.
Jérôme, Jacques and I carried on on foot with crampons just below the ridge by some rocks on a more or less transformed snow pack and Martin continued on skis 20 meters below us. When Jérôme and I arrived under the last rocks 30 m. below the summit Jacques was on the ridge 80m below us and Martin was 20 meters below us.
Martin was in the middle of the face and cross from a zone of transformed snow to a zone of windblown snow. The slab broke below his skis and he fell and was taken by the slab. As he was on the edge of the slab for a secodn I thought he would be able to stop but I quickly realized he couldn’t do anything. When everything stopped I couldn’t see anything at first (a convex slope hid a good part of the slide). We started to descend on foot but quickly spotted a black dot which moved in the middle of the debris 300 m lower down. The avalanche had covered 500 m. After trying in vain to call the rescue services (no network) we descended rapidly, by our climbing route, to our friend; he had not been buried but was shaken and in shock.
By good luck we were able to get a signal at that spot and call the rescue services who arrived by helicopter 20 minutes later. Between the slide and the arrival of the rescuers 45 minutes had elapsed despite the fact we hadn’t waisted a single second.http://pistehors.com/news/forums/newreply/575/
The south face of the Bic Froid is like a triangle. On the east side there is a rocky slope and on the west (left) a snowy and less marked ridge which separates the south slope from the west. The accumulation was on the west slope and the center of the face in the lee of west to north west winds. The slide was not very deep in the center of the face, but deeper near the ridge where snow had built up. The slope, in the middle of the slide, was around 38°.
The slide broke below the skier and propigated to the ridge 30/40m away. The slide didn’t take any surrounding snow even after falling over a rock band at 3150 m suggesting that the slopes we’d climbed were fairly stable. The slide stopped at 2800m on a slope of 28° and the debris was not very deep. Martin was probably injured when he was taken over rocks in his path rather than by the slide.
A big thanks to the mountain rescue.
The avalanche occured in the Abriès commune in the Queyras. The victim suffered back injuries during the slide.
