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Brit killed with French guide
Posted: 20 April 2010 11:41 AM  
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Read this on the train this morning, can’t remember the paper (it was the person next to me):

A 34 year British skier, living in France, was killed by an avalanche on Sunday mid-afternoon near Zermatt. The man was ski touring on the glacier du Schwärze after passing the Schwartztor under the Pollux summit. He was in a guided party of four. Another client, also British, was slightly hurt but remained on the surface of the slide.

I remember in the interview with Anselm Baud he talked about guides and guided groups. He said something like 16-17 guides killed over the last 18 months. I looked on Wikipedia and there seem to be around 1600 registered French guides, so that’s around 1% of the profession. I also recall a number of guided / instructor led groups being involved in incidents at the start of the season.

Seems like there are some major issues to address for French guides at the moment. Is it too much pressure? Or is it just that in an unstable snow season there will be appear to be a disproportionate amount of incidents involving guides?

 
 
Posted: 20 April 2010 11:50 AM   [ # 1 ]  
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17 Baud says: http://pistehors.com/news/forums/viewthread/584/#1987

Not all of the accidents with clients. Baud criticizes the “fatalism” in the profession I think. There has been a fairly major reorganization of the guide training for the new intake. A lot more mentoring and new trainee guides are much more restricted on what they can do with clients. I think they are pretty much limited to climbing walls right at the start of their career. However this change is the result of 3 years work so not a direct response to the problems of the last two seasons.

 
 
Posted: 20 April 2010 08:07 PM   [ # 2 ]  
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Interesting, it’s a nice line but I thought generally more favorable conditions were a little earlier in the season.

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