Some brief and early details of an incident in the Valais involving a large group :

http://www.nouvelliste.ch/fr/news/suisse/news.php?idIndex=2&idContent=254852

Le Nouvelliste describe the group as “randonneurs” which is awkward to translate, literally it means hikers but in this context would equally mean snowshoers or ski tourers. The area is popular for both activities and there’s been an earlier incident this season around this location http://map.geo.admin.ch/?Y=581700&X=82900&zoom=7&bgLayer=ch.swisstopo.pixelkarte-farbe&crosshair=bowl&lang=en

A little more detail here :

http://m.swissinfo.ch/fre/nouvelles_agence/international/Avalanche_en_Valais:_quatre_personnes_decedees_et_un_disparu.html?mobileTopicId=1223500&view=mobileDetail&cid=29848492

That’s a mobile version but it should work.

Made it on to BBC in English - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12871380

Very sad. Nine on snowshoes, two on skis.
Front-page photo in Le Dauphine said they were members of a French alpine Club section.

Doesn’t sound like they were dare-devil risk-takers, just some people out to enjoy a sunny day in a pretty place.

But the mountain didn’t care.

Thanks for posting it. Good warning for the rest of us, reminder that consistently following the basic rules, every time out, does matter.

Ken

KenR - 27 March 2011 09:24 AM

Very sad. Nine on snowshoes, two on skis.
Front-page photo in Le Dauphine said they were members of a French alpine Club section.

I guessed that but I didn’t want to speculate, the profile of a mixed skier/snowshoer adult group in that area suggests a CAS or CAF group. It might account for the initial confusion about if there was a guide or not.

There’s a fair of bit extra reporting on the RSR site http://www.rsr.ch/#/info/les-titres/suisse/3042946-une-personne-toujours-recherchee-en-valais.html it’s in French and included the RSR TV reports.

I’ll post a map of the location later.

click on it for the big version, the marker in the centre is the recent incident, the one on the lower left is the earlier one I mentioned.

This, of course, is where the lifts aren’t running this season.

ise - 27 March 2011 10:24 AM

KenR - 27 March 2011 09:24 AM

Very sad. Nine on snowshoes, two on skis.
Front-page photo in Le Dauphine said they were members of a French alpine Club section.

I guessed that but I didn’t want to speculate, the profile of a mixed skier/snowshoer adult group in that area suggests a CAS or CAF group. It might account for the initial confusion about if there was a guide or not.

There’s a fair of bit extra reporting on the RSR site http://www.rsr.ch/#/info/les-titres/suisse/3042946-une-personne-toujours-recherchee-en-valais.html it’s in French and included the RSR TV reports.

I’ll post a map of the location later.

Just seen Bernard Mudry on the French TV News. Bernard is the president of the Cluses CAF and was very shaken. He didn’t add much to the information but given that he is one of the major movers and shakers in the CAF this incident may have some wider repercussions. The group would normally have been led by someone who had gone through a training programme completing modules on snow and avalanches, orientation and group leadership. The modules are based on the guide training programme used by the ENSA.

As far as I can understand it was a natural depart from the North face du Bonhomme du Tsalevey, a relatively small slide that was channeled down the couloir the group were taken at the time. The accident reminds me of an incident in the Bauges in March 2005:

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/savoie-avalanche-claims-three-skiers/

A group of 10 skiers, again from the CAF, caught in an avalanche couloir after a slide departed spontaneously from far above.

In the BSP incident we have a large group, closely spaced climbing at 12h30 which seemed fairly late on Saturday to be on such a slope. Little chance to escape the slide or space the group out AFAIKS. The avalanche risk was 3/5 but above 2400m and principally concerned natural avalanches (if anyone has the exact bulletin please post it).

I think this is the earlier incident Ian is talking about:

http://pistehors.com/news/forums/viewthread/831/#2971

under the lifts at Super St Bernard.

There was a incident at Zermatt involving a CAS group earlier in the season and obviously a large incident last season.

If you rewind some 20 years it was a series of such incidents that led to a shakeup in avalanche education and was instrumental in the development of decision support frameworks like Munter, nivotest etc. The Munter frameworks would be part of the CAS training. The slope in the photo at CONSIDERABLE risk with a large close spaced group *ought* to leave a high residual risk I’d have thought.

(part of) the inevitable second phase of any incident, misreporting in the Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370414/Four-dead-French-tourist-missing-avalanche-Swiss-Italian-border.html

it’s doubly tragic that the aftermath of any loss of life includes shoddy churnalism. They’ve not even cut and paste it out of twitter “me-too"s accurately.

Add to that the nonsense in some of the mainstream forums/twitter. The problem with the forums is they read some churnalism in the DM or some website and actually believe these guys have journalists on the ground investigating the incident rather than some geezer in an office in London.

As I understood the police chief (and as you marked on the map) they were intending to climb to the Tsousse with the aim of stopping at 2200. Not doing the HR on snowshoes as the DM suggests.

> The deaths come two months after six people were killed by an avalanche in the Swiss region of Diemtigtal, with a doctor who went to help swept away in a second avalanche.

Doh, that avalanche was 14 months ago. Enough of this shoddy reporting in the UK press.

davidof - 27 March 2011 08:40 PM

Add to that the nonsense in some of the mainstream forums/twitter. The problem with the forums is they read some churnalism in the DM or some website and actually believe these guys have journalists on the ground investigating the incident rather than some geezer in an office in London.

I can at least see where the DM is coming from. I’m highly uncomfortable about about the “reporting” on social media in situations where people have lost their lives. There’s something beyond mawkish to realise that people are running searches on google to find if anyone’s died so they can comment on it.

Not forgetting that this website forms part of that social diaspora. We try to make informed comments on incidents with the aim of learning something that may be applicable to are own trips in the mountains.

SLF has given the following information:

Grid CA: 583400/86600
Altitude: 2200m
Slope: NE

It looks like the gorge around Petacrot on your map. Can you check the grid reference Ian?

you can get a certain amount from http://map.schweizmobil.ch/?lang=en & http://map.geo.admin.ch/?lang=en if you fiddle around you can build URL’s with the reference in them althought without the ski routes and slopes. Like this :

583400/86600

http://map.geo.admin.ch/?Y=583400&X=86600&zoom=7&bgLayer=ch.swisstopo.pixelkarte-farbe&crosshair=bowl&lang=en

The picture looks to be taken around pte 1913 so you’re seeing the runout at about the worst slope section. You can see the ski route takes a much more conservative line though.

OK that makes sense. The Gite owner where the group stayed was pointing to those slopes. So they started climbing the HR path through the Valsorey valley then engaged in the n.e. facing couloir leading to pt. 2476m. It seems like an interesting choice when you have a path leading from BSP which sticks on or close to a ridge line leading to the same point and is less steep. Maybe they intended to descend this path?

maybe so, it’s not clear to me, I’d wondered if they’d come from pte 2064 off the ridge and then traversed? It’s not a crazy line and, as we know because we actually do it, it’s not unusual for groups to get a bit close on ascents. I presume it will come clear in time.

You can see the feedback loop of social media and churnalism at play with this, sagely questioning how close the group were and then reporting or quoting each other. Also the photo’s they’re seeing are at the runout of the slide not the fracture which was some 300m higher up.