Three skiers, including a high mountain guide, have been killed by an avalanche in the notorious North East facing Combe des Lanchettes at les Arcs around midday today. The guide, 35 year old Benjamin Gaimard, was accompanied by a season worker and a tourist, both French nationals. Benjamin is the son of local guide Alain Gaimard owner of the ski school Arc Adventures and grand-son of former Bourg St Maurice mayor. Needless to say the whole community is in shock at the news.

All were equipped with avalanche beacons and ABS Airbags. The bodies of two of the skiers have been found under 6 meters of snow. Another skier has been located under 9 meters of snow but the rescue services were not able to recover his body. The avalanche was over 1000m long and broke on two sides of the combe. The debris was spread over a 100x50 meter zone and was 12 meters deep in places. The snow was extremely heavy and wet.

The avalanche risk was 3/5 (Considerable) above 2100 meters. Meteo France noted that the snowpack was slowly stabilizing with the freeze/thaw cycle but above 2100 meters there was up to 70cm of fresh snow in the sector that had been accompanied by west to south-west winds. Wet snow had fallen to 2500 meters adding to the instability. The avalanche bulletin warned against west to north to east slopes where a weak layer of facetted snow is present with the possilbility of triggering avalaches of considerable volume.

There have been seven deaths in France so far this season. The other fatalities occured in Corsica, the Hautes-Alpes, Haute-Savoie and Savoie.

PisteHors readers will remember two young men who were killed in the same combe in January 2006 despite being with a ski instructor and having ABS Airbag systems. There was another fatality a few days later.

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/five-killed-in-alps-avalanches/
http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/eight-killed-in-avalanches-across-french-alps/

A British snowboarder was killed in the same combe in 2005.

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/four-killed-in-separate-avalanches/

As Benjamin Gaimard has himself said “the mountains are an domain which make their own rules, rules you can’t cheat”, yesterday was a brutal reminder of that fact.

We were heading up the Lanchettes chairlift as the first three pisteurs went in to start the rescue - the friendly liftie warned us that there had been a big avalanche and not to go in the combe.  Later as the weather closed in, the rescue was called off and I saw the ski patrol leave the combe with a blood wagon containing the doctor who had been helicoptered on foot in and was unable to ski/board out.  I overheard the doctor say that first two bodies that they had found had suffered multiple dislocations.  Poor souls.

The day after (yesterday) I looked in to the combe from the centre and saw how the right flank of the combe had avalanched, pretty much from the top.  Normally you traverse hard right with a slight climb across some bluffs to get to this area.  I’ve lost count how many times we have skied this.

This last week we have seen numerous cracks in the snow pack around Les Arcs, especially in north facing slopes above 2000-2500m.  I was pulled down by a 25-30 m slide on a convex slope around 2300m that broke up - luckily without harm.  There is a weak layer of hoar and I fear there will be more avalanches in the immediate future.  Be safe everyone!

GuyNich - 03 January 2010 12:54 PM

There is a weak layer of hoar and I fear there will be more avalanches in the immediate future.  Be safe everyone!

we have that and lots of wind,
and we have lots of people suffering with powder fever.  i’m trying my best to control myself.

this avalanche is a real reminder of the forces and power of snow. 3 things you’d think would help improve safety and survival:
a mountain guide
a transciever
and abs bags have all been proved useless against the snow.

it makes me wonder what the guide was thinking.  i’ve only skied les arc twice (and biked it twice too) so i’m not too familiar with names so can someone describe where abouts the place is?

It’s very accessible from Arcs 2000 ski station.  Lanchettes chairlift then a short walk across the piste and beyond. 

Combe des Lanchettes in Google Maps. Copy this shortcut, paste it into a new browser window and select ”terrain” to see contours.  Google Maps shows the combe facing N-E-E.

The avalanche this New Year’s day was on the N-N-E facing slope (which is seen as the right flank when entering the combe at 2480m, directly opposite from the top of the Lanchettes chairlift).

Avalanches happen frequently on the N-E-E facing entry starting at about 2480m, below which two young brothers died in 2006 also led by a guide.  You’ll see a wooden cross in their memory if you visit.  The snow pack is usually convex here.  Occasionally pisteurs trigger avalanches here with explosives, but because this is a nature reserve this happens rarely.

On bad weather days, when the lift shuts due to wind, idiots sometimes skin up from Arcs 2000 to ski it.  One person died in an avalanche two years ago in a whiteout (if I remember the year correctly).  His “mate” got to the pub La Ferme in Villaroger and only alerted the rescue service after dark.

A dangerous place to be sure ... as said elsewhere the name “Lanche” is local patois for avalanche.  It’s a place to be avoided early in the season, and especially after recent snowfall/wind/change in temperature. 

In fact, so many people have died here that it’s unwise to go at all.

Thanks for the info Guy.

What will catch some people out is how quickly the conditions can change. Below 2000-2300m things have been stablized by the recent rain and return to cold weather but higher up there is a lot of snow now and we had a long period of thin snowpack this autumn on north sector slopes so a lot of depth hoar buried down there with other weak layers in between. So, say you are touring, you can go from relatively safe to relatively dangerous in the space of a quarter of an hour.

The Lanchettes avalanche must have been big as the guys either were unable to use their Airbags or they were ineffective. Maybe the Airbags gave them too much feeling of security? It is a route the guys at Arc Adventure know very well. I saw Philippe Deslandes (a colleage of Benjamin Gaimard) on the TV yesterday. He looked devastated. I’ve skied with Philippe including the Lanchettes.

There was some footage of the rescue operation, the police and other rescue workers have had to dig out terraces to get to the bodies. As one of them pointed out they are buried as deep as the roofs of the shops on the front neige at Arc 1800. For anyone who reads French the Dauphine Libere has some more coverage of the aftershocks

http://www.ledauphine.com/index.jspz?chaine=85&article=243054

The director of piste services Cédric Perretier makes the point the beacons, ABS Airbag etc help find victims but doesn’t necessarily save them. He goes on “when we talk about a risk 3/5 we are talking about just in the ski area”

A couple of points. In the article Philippe Deslandes (and not Delandes) confirms that the airbags had been operated. Analyzing the statistics on ABS Usage there is a 1:77 of dying if the ABS has been operated… obviously this accident will revise those figures but the ABS Airbag is more than just a means of finding skiers caught in an avalanche, it is a proven survival tool. M. Perretier also says the avalanche bulletin is just for ski resorts. This is nonsense, indeed Meteo France have even said in the past that is doesn’t apply particularly well to many off piste areas in resorts because these get a lot of skier compaction and often are affected by avalanche control work. 3/5 is considerable risk, you would treat places like the Lanchettes with a lot of care especially given that the bulletin had specifically mentioned North-East slopes from being at risk.

Given the burial depths of the victims, it is fair to assume they ended up in a ‘terrain trap’. This is the kind of situation were ABS airbags are not affective. Despite this fact, the airbag systems are recommanded (complementary to tranceiver, shovel and probe) by the IKAR, the international organisation for mountain rescue.

This photo from Data - Avalanche / PGHM shows the scale of the recovery operation

gives a different perspective to the term “strategic shoveling”

http://www.data-avalanche.org/alea_avalanches/view_item/Avalanche/50000384

Alain Gaimard spoke at a ceromony for his son today. It is true to say that the whole town turned out of the event which was also attended by local VIPs. Mr Gaimard recalled the time when the Combe des Lanches was avalanche controlled by piste services but this is no longer possible due to the nature reserve. He pointed out that a simple cord separates “Disneyland (les Arcs)” from the “High Mountains”. He believes that a solution needs to be found to resolve this contrast which has proved fatal to a dozen of off piste skiers over the last few years.