Henry Schniewind has emailed to tell us of an avalanche fatality at Val d’Isere today in the Fornet sector. Details are still a bit sketchy but the incident occured in the notorious Gorge de Malpasset (the name speaks for itself - bad passage). Henry says the route is impassable at the moment (many a skier has been blocked descending this route, always check with the piste patrol if it is practicable). A husband and wife were skiing the gorge when they were hit by a relatively small slide. This took the man into the water. The wife is ok but was slightly hypothermic.
There has been a lot of snow over the last few days. Yesterday and today it was fairly humid and accompanied by strong winds. As far as we know the avalanche risk was Considerable (3/5) but we will check this with Meteo France later.