With the return of good weather today skiers were out in force. Despite warnings and yesterday's avalanches the deadly series continued today. If social media is a guide ski tourers, perhaps better informed and equipped were absent from the hecatombe.
In the Chamonix valley, mountain rescue teams were called shortly before 3 p.m. to an avalanche in the central Posettes couloir above the village of Vallorcine, near Chamonix. Two men were caught by the slide. One of them, a 32-year-old ski patroller working at the Flégère ski area, was violently thrown against a tree and died from his injuries. He was the father of young children. The second skier escaped unharmed.
Credit: Piste Services Orelle
Further south in the Savoie, two more skiers lost their lives on Sunday, adding to the toll after three men were killed by avalanches the previous day. At Courchevel, a skier was buried and killed in the off-piste sector of Roche Grise. The piste patrol witnessed the slide, which was in the Creux Noirs area. A high mountain guy intervened immediately to assit the victim before rescue services arrived. Courchevel resort has said that "Given the current conditions, S3V urges all users to exercise the utmost vigilance and strictly adhere to safety guidelines and snow reports."
A few hours later, an English skier in his fifties was caught by an avalanche in the Verduns Sud off-piste area of La Plagne in the Champagny-en-Vanoise sector. He was not equipped with an avalanche transceiver. Despite the deployment of significant rescue resources, he was located only after nearly 50 minutes, buried under 2.5 metres of snow.
The avalanche risk was 4 out of 5 above 1600 meters altitude and authorities had called for extra caution saying the risk was "maximum" for back country travelers. Meteo France warned that above 1,600 meters there are numerous reactive slabs with remote triggering possible. Breaks could reach 1.5 m with significant mobilizable volumes of snow, giving rise to size 2 to 3 (medium to large) avalanches that can travel far onto flat terrain. In a large northern sector size 4 avalanches couldn't be ruled out breaking on a deeply buried weak layer.
Several other avalanches were reported during the morning. At Tignes, a snowboarder was partially buried in a lake skiing in the Tremplins sector. He was rescued by piste patrol then taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia. In Orelle, two off-piste skiers without avalanche transceivers were caught in a slide; one was seriously injured and airlifted to hospital, while the other escaped unhurt.
By midday, emergency services had already responded to six separate avalanches across the region. Authorities once again urged extreme caution, warning that the snowpack remains highly unstable and that off-piste skiing continues to pose a serious danger in the coming days. The access road to les Arcs was also blocked by an avalanche this evening.