The allure of the sparkling white snow of Europe’s mountain peaks is becoming an increasingly fatal attraction as figures show that more skiers and climbers will have died in avalanche accidents in the Alps this winter than in any previously recorded season.
By Saturday, in the French Alps alone, 49 people had died in off-piste avalanche accidents — the highest figure since records began 35 years ago, and already above the normal average total winter fatality rate of 30. In Switzerland there have been 19 deaths since October, including 12 in the past 17 days. Forecasts for the Alps and the Pyrenees suggest conditions that could further destabilise the snow cover.
Experts blame this winter’s high death toll on irregular weather patterns. The fashion for extreme sports has made the situation worse by attracting more people to perilous slopes.
The focus on the record death toll — which, for now, is limited to the Italian, French, Swiss and Austrian Alps — comes in the wake of the deaths of three Britons last week on a snowshoe hike in Spain’s Sierra Nevada.
The bodies of Colin Riddiough (46), Paul Dick (56) and John Plews (30), all from east Cleveland, were found in a snow hole they had dug during a blizzard on the southern slope of Spain’s highest peak, the 3 480m Mulhacen. Riddiough’s son, Stephen (20), survived after leaving to raise the alarm.
The 22 hours it took to find and airlift the bodies raised questions about the mountain rescue services’ effectiveness. But Europe’s rescue teams claim that they have never been better equipped than they are this season.
Frédéric Jarry, of the Grenoble-based Anena snow and avalanche research centre, said it is difficult for even the fastest teams to reach avalanche victims quickly enough to save their lives.
”Someone who is buried under snow has an 80% chance of survival if he or she is dug out within 15 minutes. This is because it becomes difficult to breathe and impossible to move even under a few centimetres of snow. After 30 minutes their survival chances are reduced to 30%.”
Jarry said skiers in a responsible group equipped with shovels, probes and transceivers have the best chance of survival. ”Even if you recruit more mountain rescuers, buy more helicopters and train more dogs, there is no guarantee that they will get there in time,” he said.
Unlike Swiss mountain rescue, which is private and reimbursed by holidaymakers’ insurance fees, the French service is provided by mountain police (the CRS), gendarmes and fire officers. French mountain rescuers are national heroes and an attempt to privatise them in 2002 was met by a national outcry.
While paying a visit recently to Chamonix, Nicolas Sarkozy — whose interior ministry funds the CRS — insisted that mountain rescue would remain free.
Major Pascal Sancho, head of the CRS’s 38-strong Pyrenees squadron, said on Saturday the current warm weather, accompanied by rain as high as 2 000m, could bring avalanches there too if the temperature does not fall. The high number of Alpine avalanches is down to recent big snowfalls after poor snowfalls earlier in the winter.
”Had we had a thaw after the early snowfall, the bottom layer would be less brittle,” said Jarry.
Thomas Wiesinger, of the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Study in Davos, said: ”An added problem this year has been slab avalanches. These are caused by wind depositing snow on leeward slopes and creating slabs of sometimes 200m square, which are difficult to see. When you are on a slab and it starts moving, it is almost impossible to get off it.”
Wiesinger said the worst-affected Swiss areas are the big resorts — Zermatt, Davos, St Moritz, Les Diablerets and Verbier. ”In the past week we have had five avalanche accidents — though fortunately no fatalities — in one valley at Verbier. We think any skiing above 1 800m is dangerous at the moment and I would advise people not to go on to anything [with] more than 30-degree slopes.”
But avalanche expert Henry Schniewind said ”telling skiers about danger is a little like trying to teach safe sex to adolescents — they will try it anyway”.
For 17 years, Schniewind has been running safety ”chats” at Dick’s Tea Bar in Val d’Isère, a resort that has about 300 000 visitors a year.
”The trouble is that off-piste has become trendy,” he said. ”Ski equipment has developed in such a way that almost anyone can go off-piste after a few hours on skis or a snowboard. A few years ago, skis were narrower and more rigid so it would take longer to become proficient, and people would be more familiar with the mountain before they went off-piste.” — Guardian Unlimited Â