A 54 year old man has been killed by an avalanche above the Buet village in Vallorcine close to Chamonix. The victim, qualified as a mountain leader, was local to the area. He was skiing the couloir central under the Aiguillette des Posettes which descends to Buet with a couple of friends at the time of the accident. The two friends escaped without injury. The incident occured shortly before midday. The rescue involved the police helicopter, a dog handler and 4 rescue workers. The victim was found in a state of cardio-vascular arrest and could not be revived. The operation took around an hour.
The avalanche risk was Considerable (3/5) above 1800 meters altitude. There had been considerable fresh snow in the area and strong south-west (foehn) winds had formed new slabs on Sunday. Meteo France warned that these could be triggered by a single skier and also said that large sluffs could break under the feet of a skier.