Brother Caught in Avalanche Today in St. Anton

[powbear]

Just found this at the beginning of 2009 season... Bump for those heading to St Anton.
In my first season there, I was hit on the other side of Mattun ( for those of you that know the area, one of the reasonably wide chutes under the Kapall Chair.) My riding buddies decided that they couldn't wait until I had cleared the chute, dropped in together, and both made hard turns away from each other with predictable results. Ended up in the bottom of the valley, on top of the slide (thank god).
The mountain rescue were waiting for us at the bottom of Steissbachtal piste, and were very unhappy, but mostly just wantede to make sure no one else was caught.
Having been in St Anton for 4 seasons since, I have to say I'm really impressed with the rescue guys there. Response time is pretty good from what I can see ( having been involved in a couple of incidents since) and with such a huge amount of people looking to ski the pow, there are incidents very frequently.
Myself and my wife last season where skiing Skiers right of North Face.. not a very challenging line, but a good charge down, when we came across a pretty much novice skier, snowplowwing her way down with no kit at all. The access to some pretty dangerous terrain is so easy that it's not a surprise that people drop stuff on each other as there's so many people who don't have any BC experience hitting lines they probably shouldn't.
Hope your Bro has fully recovered H-man, and sorry to bring this back to mind.
Stay safe out there people, and remember.... look up as well as down.

[dom_1080]

Just about to start a season in Tignes, and by god this is a welcome reminder of why i need to really train as much as i can at the start of the season. You seemed to have dealt with it damn well considering... i can only imagine the fear and stress involved in trying to rescue your own brother and the possibility of finding a corpse. sends shivers.