In a tragic occurrence in the French Alps on Wednesday, local authorities confirmed the deaths of five skiers as a result of two separate avalanches. In the southeastern Savoie region, near Val-Cenis, four Norwegian skiers were buried under a deadly snow torrent. Of the group, three skiers died instantly, while a fourth individual, a woman, succumbed later at a hospital after experiencing severe hypothermia and cardiac arrest. They were part of a larger group of seven, and the remaining three members emerged unhurt.
Jacques Arnoux, the mayor of Val-Cenis, stated that each skier in the group had equipped themselves with an avalanche beacon as they engaged in off-piste skiing, which involves traveling in areas not groomed for skiing and carries a higher risk. "It was an avalanche of great size which was triggered outside the ski area," Mayor Arnoux elaborated on the circumstances.
In a separate incident, a 30-year-old Swiss woman was killed in an avalanche in the Haute-Savoie region, near Chamonix. She was skiing off-piste with her brother, who has been taken to the hospital for assessments, while their father escaped unharmed. The trio had also taken precautions, using anti-avalanche airbags during their ski excursion in the Mont Blanc massif.
Prior to these incidents, another tragic event occurred on Tuesday when a 55-year-old skier of Brazilian-Portuguese descent lost his life following a "very large" avalanche on an off-piste area of Mont Blanc. The recent string of avalanches has underlined the dangers associated with backcountry skiing in the region.
