http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/02...under-way.html
Anyone have additional information about this?
Vibes to all those involved.
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/02...under-way.html
Anyone have additional information about this?
Vibes to all those involved.
Apparently a guided group of some kind set it off. 4 confirmed dead, sounds like maybe 2 found alive 3 still missing but other than 4 dead it's not very clear. Picture from here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38954628
Attachment 199801
some info and a few more pictures on skipass and here. that wall thing is supposed to protect the buildings seen above from avalanches.
http://skipass.fr/p/news/145584/6596_7925-1.jpg
That is a nasty terrain trap.
I'm in Val d'Isère for the school holidays. Saw the aftermath 2.5 hours after the slide. Scary and huge avalanche, very deep (on some spots the ground is scraped like in a spring side). This slope is very avy prone (it's named lavancher, ie avalanche), but usualy completely tracked out. There's indeed a man made "wall" at the bottom to protect the resort underneath. Thus a massive accumulation of compacted snow (6 to 8 meters according to the reports).
I will not second guess the ski instructor guiding today, No real snow fall for 3 days, but strong southern winds and warm temperature. What do I know.
There was some confusion regarding the number of people buried. Initial reports said a group of 7 plus a ski instructor from the ESF. It seems that actualy the group splited earlier and only 4 people were caught. A father, his 2 sons ( 15 and 18) and the instructor. They had their beacon on, and the ski patrol was just on top of the hill, but the avy was massive.
This hit close to home. I have 2 kids about the same age. and my teenage (14) daughter spent last week doing precisely this: A week of off piste skiing in a group with a instructor, in the Espace Killy.
That's so incredibly sad.
Stomach turning. :(
I'm in Val D'Isere tomorrow and makes you think twice. There is definitely more avy prone terrain in the area than what was triggered... I try and always grab a guide out there but nothing is guaranteed. Tough to hear about and thoughts to all involved.
Vibes and totally get this post. Was skiing her in Saas some of the same stuff. 3 days post storm, easy terrain, no worries stuff....and then this happened. Mother Nature.Quote:
Originally Posted by philippeR
Incredibly scary huge slide and terrain trap! Wow. I skied there in the late nineties when they had a ton of snow and huge avy's going off everywhere before we went over but things calmed down the week we were there. I remember being disappointed with how conservative our guide was but he knew what he was saving my fool ass from.
Have to agree that this is a problematic face. I've done 3 winters in Val/Tignes and I always stayed clear of this face. It's better doing the couloirs off the other side (Mickeys Ears). In the bad winter storm cycle of 98/99 it slide with a crown depth over 8ft, burying a group so deep, it took heavy machinery to find them weeks later.
With conditions on the day, you have to look at the guides decision with a foehn wind and warmer temperatures, but the face was heavily skied with plenty of tracks already on it. Maybe that gave false security to the group.
A sad day indeed!
I guess off-piste guiding in lean years is very competitive there, because I can't think of many other reasons why a guide would choose to guide on terrain that looks like that, over a terrain trap like that, with vulnerable members of the public at risk below you like that.
Very sad for those affected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by klar
That man-made 'terrain trap' was built to protect the buildings in Le Lac. Sadly, in this accident, it buried the victims in meters of snow.Quote:
Originally Posted by neck beard
A really unfortunate double edged sword. The structure/wall needed to be there. But so too perhaps did some other mitigating strategy to offset the increased risk from the resultant terrain trap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ski. Fish. Bike.
Wow. Massive. Sad story.
Ha! I have that little book.
...Find your way through the top of some avalanche fences to ski an adjacent avalanche start zone that should have avalanche fences but doesn't...
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03...atalities.html
Another slide....damn not good...but lucky no fatalities.
4 dead in austria today, 1 body recovered from 12m depth. fucked up season.
http://tirol.orf.at/news/stories/2831196/
http://files.orf.at/slides2/tirolmag...2_j44bdkbf.jpg
12 METERS - krikey
http://files.orf.at/slides2/tirolmag...6_wed3sh53.jpg
yeah. danger level low to moderate. swiss group of 8, reportedly with fully certified guide. clients all over 60y/old. local person not part of the group did two laps on it just before the group skied and triggered it. some more info here in german http://lawinenwarndienst.blogspot.co...rubenkopf.html
I've had a lot of really, really good days on that mountain and have skied it plenty of times on moderate days (in wind/storm slab type situations, as far as I recall not in pwl "moderate" conditions). anyway, this is a lot closer to home than feels comfortable.
Avalanche risk level between 1 and 2... Shit. They did everything by the book. So sad.
Same face, last year, video via Skipass. Four skiers caught from a group of 8, skinning uphill. No casualties.
https://youtu.be/S-OjlBZ84Jk
Skipass says it's dangerous face, with a bad history. Is that true ?
Well, what isn't a dangerous face? To my knowledge there was one previous fatality there several years ago (edit: I checked, it was in 2005). It is not more or less dangerous than the same kind of terrain elsewhere. It's a large, relatively open face, the terrain rolls here and there and you have many smaller features kind of dividing the main face into logical lines but not separating it into really independent parts. Pitch is between 30 and 35 for the most part, up to 40° in a few spots. They did not trigger it in a particularly steep section. The whole thing is by no means an "extreme" undertaking and it seems the affected group was on the most conservative route there is on it.
The slide last year happened on a day with considerable danger and the general situation that led to that day's danger rating made it far more obvious that you wouldn't want to be on this slope. It was so sketchy that someone was filming them before anything even happened, anticipating that something would happen. This time nobody was expecting it to go like that. We have been having a couple of winters with a persistent weak layer problem of a level of seriousness that a lot of people (me included) are not used to.
Tanks for the perspective. A freak winter indeed.
Video.Quote:
Originally Posted by steezybomber