Is is just me or does there seem like a big spike in avalanche incidents this year? TGR seems to be full of Canadian and US reports on this. I know Piste Hors does some very comprehensive updates - any views or statistics?

last year, from my failing memory seemed to pretty good/low incidence of accidents, was that just a temp. departure from mean because of the low number of off piste/the weather - all views welcome

Hi,

I have covered all the fatal avalanches since 2001/2. This year we have 7 fatalities in France that I know about. The Haute-Savoie fire services report an incident in the Combe de Tardevant in the Aravis on Saturday but I don’t have any details of this yet.

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/sub/category/Avalanche/

This time last year there were 4 fatalities by the same date but this year is close to average for France. However the mountains missed the heavy snow of November that has caused a lot of problems in Switzerland and Austria. The North American figures also look very high, around 20 deaths I think.

Overall for France conditions have been pretty stable and predictable with incidents largely confined to days during or after storms. This is our report for 2006-2007

http://pistehors.com/pistehors/avalanche/analysis-2006.pdf

However we welcome any additional reports you might like to post to the forums.

I should add that the purpose of the PisteHors reports is the gather as much information as possible for educational purposes. I know the guys at TGR do a good job too. However I feel for some websites it is internet voyeurism with a lot of inaccurate speculation which I don’t think is useful.

This article suggests that it is a La Niña affect, at least in Washington

http://www.yakima-herald.com/page/dis/290756368799677