The ongoing freeride boom has kinda strange effect in St. Anton. On bluebird powder days they don’t even bother to open the upper lifts anymore so people don’t get to more avalanche prone terrain. This results in steady increasing popularity of skinning up to the usual places which might or might’ve been not sufficiently avalanche controlled.
One guy died at Albona in a place which in normal circumstances is tracked out completely after 15 minutes. Unfortunately since the access lift was not running, the hut at the entrance was closed thus the avalanche work was not done, the complete quite massive face went down.
