Ambrose MANUS, a guide has given this eyewitness report
I was present yesterday at the slide yesterday at 13h00 a slide in the Beaufortain range in the combe nord sous le lieu dit « Côte 2000 » which links to the bottom of the east face of the Légette du Mirantin exactly at the point of the blue triangle formed by the ski routes on the IGN map.
The tour had about 30 skiers including a group of 6. The victim, 71 years old and “experienced” was skiing in the bowl of powder snow. Two skiers and a dog had preceeded her without any problems and maybe 1 or 2 other skiers from her group.
The whole bowl went, her colleagues noted the point where she was buried about 20 meters before the end of the deposition zone.
Alerted by a colleague I arrived 10 minutes later (trace left on the photo - see link below).
The witnesses told me that the victim had a beacon but it was not switched on. A checked to see if there was signal then tried to organize a probe line. Out of 12 people only 3 had probes. The rescue services were alerted by phone and I called in on my radio.
We tried to get help from other skiers but it was chaos.
A helicopter arrived with help 15 minutes later. They tried to take control An avalanche dog started to search. Second rotation of the helicopter brought longer probes (we couldn’t touch the base of the avalanche) and a second dog from the Arêches ski patrol with his master. The dog found the victim in 30 seconds. The victim was under 1 meter of snow at 2 meters from the end of the avalanche. The avalanche was 40-70cm deep and 100 m wide and ran 100m on a number of branches.
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