With 30 to 35cm of new snow expected overnight accompanied by strong south-westerly winds (Sunday 6th February) Meteo France has launched a yellow alert for avalanches.

Following an incident where an employee of the Folice Douce restaurant at Val d'Isere was killed by a piste basher resorts have warned of the dangers of being on the slopes at night.

French mountain rescue services have called for prudence after the fourth ski death in a fortnight.

A ski tourer has been killed by an avalanche around 13h today in the Chablais, the first avalanche fatality this season.

Back in 2018 we wrote a short article discussing research on how experience affects your chances of getting caught and possibly killed by an avalanche. Not as much as you might hope, it would seem.

An avalanche in the Foux d'Allos area caught a 44 year old man and his 17 year old daughter around 15h00 today. They were skiing off piste.

Multiple avalanche burials are a subject that preoccupies backcountry travellers with much discussion about the latest avalanche transceivers and how they cope with this problem.

We talked about the dangers of cornices recently. This weekend the mountain rescue (Peleton de Gendarmerie and Fire Services) had a difficult night rescue in the Vosges.

Last weekend was marked by sustained snowfall in the Pyrenean mountains, especially towards the west. The fresh snow was accompanied by strong winds. Locally up to a meter of new snow was recorded.

The snowy start to December continued over the weekend with up to a meter of new snow in the central and western Pyrenees and fresh snow in the Alps.