The Dauphinée Libérée (DL) recently published an article about the winter sports accident statistics in France for December so far:
http://www.ledauphine.com/faits-divers/2012/12/27/vigilance-dans-les-pentes

An earlier version of the article listed the accidents in a more tabular way, which I found easier to understand. I’ve reconstructed this table, hopefully without too many errors, although I haven’t found a way of formatting it as a table in Pistehors.

Date Resort Activity

5/12 Tignes Off-piste skiing
6/12 Serraval Snow shoeing
13/12 Chartreuse Ski Touring
16/12 Risoul Off-piste boarding
21/12 Val d’Isere Off-piste skiing
26/12 Molines, Queyras Off-piste boarding

Each of these accidents resulted in one fatality. There was also an avalanche accident in Tignes on 12 Dec. The most recent information I’ve found (16 Dec) was that the victim was still in coma.

In an attempt to verify this table, I looked at ANENA, but its website seems to have been redesigned since last season. In the past, a link like http://www.anena.org/5041-bilan-des-accidents.htm used to lead to tables like this for past seasons, and also for the current season so far. Now it only shows a brief summary of last season’s statistics. Does anyone know where the detailed tables have gone?

The official Swiss and Austrian tables of avalanche statistics for the current nivological year are at http://www.slf.ch/praevention/lawinenunfaelle/unfaelle_aktuell/index_DE and http://lawine.tirol.gv.at/schnee-lawineninfo/unfaelle/ respectively. They show two avalanche fatalities in Switzerland since the beginning of December 2012, and four in Austria.

In addition, the DL article talks about fatal winter sports accidents in France that were not related to avalanches. Once again this is my attempt to capture the essence of their table (and, sadly, to bring it up to date).

8/12 La Clusaz Collision with tree Edge of piste
8/12 Chamonix Fall into hole?  Edge of piste
22/12 Gourette Fall from chair lift On piste
26/12 Tourmalet Jump On piste boarding
26/12 St Pierre des Forcats Collision with tree Edge of piste skiing
29/12?  Ax-3-Domaines Collision with pole On piste skiing
31/12 Gresse-en-Vercors Fall?  Snow shoeing

I won’t attempt to draw any conclusions from this table as it’s too small a sample to be statistically significant. In addition, I am uncertain how complete it is (it doesn’t include any collisions between skiers, for example). Nevertheless I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a table like it.
An important point that the DL article makes is that only 90% of tourers and 50% of off-piste skiers/boarders carry the essential minimum equipment: transceiver, shovel and probe. Does anyone know of a reputable study that might be a source for a statement like this? If it’s true, there is still a huge problem over avalanche awareness/education. There are no easy ways to solve it, but I believe information is an important part of any solution. I hope that ANENA’s statistics for the current and previous seasons are still publicly available somewhere, and that it’s my fault that I haven’t been able to find them.

I’ve not found the ANENA’s figures either. I don’t know why they have vanished. Last season’s figures were never updated after April and missed one avalanche death during the season but I think their annual report was correct but I will have to recheck it. They are very variable at reporting. When I started compiling my figures they gave very little detail such as the avalanche risk, altitude etc. About 3 years ago they started publishing this information including accident reports in some cases so I stopped updating my public table as it seemed like a duplication of effort. This year I posted an end of season table as a PDF

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/1053-french-avalanche-analysis-for-2011-12/

now that the ANENA no longer seems to publish this information I will start doing it again. Thanks for compiling your list and report, I will use this as a starting point. I have the avalanche risk for all of the incidents you’ve mentioned. In the future I will make the table publically updatable so anyone can add figures easily.

RichardH - 01 January 2013 06:33 PM

An important point that the DL article makes is that only 90% of tourers and 50% of off-piste skiers/boarders carry the essential minimum equipment: transceiver, shovel and probe. Does anyone know of a reputable study that might be a source for a statement like this? If it’s true, there is still a huge problem over avalanche awareness/education.

It could be anecdotal but that looks about right doesn’t it? How the activity is defined is fairly crucial though. One technical, legal, administrative definition of off-piste is anything more than 2 metres from the line defined by piste markers. That puts a lot of recreational skiers off piste. By that definition they’re quite right to ignore the kit-obessed internet zealotry and form their own risk assessment that correctly concludes they don’t need transceiver, shovel and probe.

If ski touring is defined as anything that involves ascent with skis then 90% with gear even looks slightly high if you’re including people just climbing up to a local mountain restaurant or skiing local terrain which is extremely common around here at least. I was out on a local hill yesterday that’s a disused ski station and you see a number of skiers without any gear and I wouldn’t leap to the conclusion they were unaware of the risks. If you also factor the number of people who are out on their own and may decide not to bother to carry a transceiver then that 90% number looks fairly low.

Obviously accident figures don’t include zero event data so it’s dangerous to extrapolate but accident data looks about right as well. By definition this is in now in terrain that has a real risk of avalanche and then you’re seeing tourers without gear being vanishingly rare but off-piste skiers without gear as fairly common.

I struggle to see a huge virtue in skiing around with a load of gear you don’t need. In fact it’s arguably the reverse, where’s the difference between the guy who can’t tell he’s on a slope where transceiver, shovel and probe are appropriate and the guy who who carries them around on piste? Either way isn’t that a broken risk assessment and an inability to recognise the situation they’re in?

ise - 02 January 2013 09:30 AM

If you also factor the number of people who are out on their own and may decide not to bother to carry a transceiver then that 90% number looks fairly low.

Yes there’s lots of people touring solo out in the backcountry. Not sure how it affects the 90% claim.

Anyway there have been various studies which suggest that the odds of surviving burial with both victim and partners all using beacon+probe+shovel are not more than 50%—which raises the question of why carrying that equipment immediately transforms the risk of skiing in avalanche terrain from “dangerously bad” to “acceptably OK”.
(myself I normally add an Avalung when skiing with partners)

Ken

KenR - 03 January 2013 12:51 AM

Anyway there have been various studies which suggest that the odds of surviving burial with both victim and partners all using beacon+probe+shovel are not more than 50%—which raises the question of why carrying that equipment immediately transforms the risk of skiing in avalanche terrain from “dangerously bad” to “acceptably OK”.
(myself I normally add an Avalung when skiing with partners)

Ken

There does seem to be a mindset growing that avalanches are actually a high probability event that can be effectively mitigated with safety gear like beacon, probe & shovel with airbags increasingly being added. Part of that is a basic misunderstanding of real survival rates in avalanche incidents. There’s an unwarranted focus on figures like the survival chances for short burials without any consideration for overall survival data. The chances or survival if recovered in 15mins are elevated but the chances of being recovered in that window aren’t good at all. And the drills being carried out are producing extremely unrealistic expectations.

We’re seeing claims that 8 or 10 year olds can proficient with a beacon and yet it’s pretty clear if you’re skiing with an 8 year old and caught in an avalanche one of you is going to die. 8 year olds aren’t very robust if they’re buried and they’re not going to be very effective moving a ton of snow to dig someone else out either.

I feel that if you’re caught in an avalanche the gear you’re carrying isn’t a lot more than the last desperate roll of the dice.

I see that ANENA has finally started its table of avalanche statistics for this season. It’s at http://www.anena.org/5463-bilan-des-accidents-d-avalanche-2012-2013.htm