A snowboarder has been killed by a slab avalanche a little after midday in the ski resort of Risoul in the Hautes-Alpes. He was off piste in the crêtes de Ravis sector when he triggered a slab at 2400 meters altitude. The zone is easily accessible from the ski lifts and rejoins the resort runs lower down.

A hundred rescue workers were involved in the search operation. According to the PGHM in Briancon it was “a large wind slab measuring 500 by 200 meters and between 40 to 100 cm deep”. The victim was found after around 90 minutes buried
under 250cm meters of snow. He was in a state of cardio-vascular arrest. “He was not wearing either an avalanche transceiver or Recco. The three teams of avalanche dogs had trouble working due to the large number of rescue workers on the scene as well as
eye witnesses who had already started digging in the snow and disturbed the scene.” Five waves of probe lines eventually found the man.

Meteo France had issued an orange avalanche alert for the area. Between 40 to 80cm of fresh snow had fallen in the mountains accompanied by strong winds from the south-west.

For information the avalanche risk was 4/5 (High) above 1800 meters yesterday on all slope aspects. Windslab was continuing to form on ridges, cols etc under the West to North West wind with many skier very likely.

A pretty grim start to the season - four dead and six injured from avalanches in the Western Alps (none of the dead wearing beacons) by my count, not including the deaths at la Clusaz and the Grands Montets.  With snow forecast for most days through Christmas, this may not be the end of it.  Stay safe everyone.

It is certainly a much more complex start to the season this year and this is what the figures show. Last year we had a big dump around the 5th of December followed by coldish clear stable weather which let this consolidate. This year a bit yoyo in temperatures with a series of dumps, some quite big again. The high altitude rain should settle things down below the 2100/2000 meter mark when it cools down again but that is not until next week at the earlies. We have spring like temperatures forecast for Thursday with the zero iso at 2600 meters. Wednesday, which will be the first really clear, sunny day for a while, will be a test.

Sorry to hear about a fellow boarder being caught. With a slide like that he would not have had much of a chance, even with an ARVA. An airbag may have helped in this case though. At least with a beeper he would have been found quicker with less manpower. Somethng to consider although that doesn’t matter to him now. Condolences to his family.

Bart, there was an avalanche in Austria, did you count that? So 1 Italian, 3 French plus some Swiss deaths. I will post the Austrian report if I can find it.

Rim.