Overview
- Two separate backcountry avalanches on Saturday killed 40-year-old ski tourers in the French Pyrenees and the Austrian Alps.
- Police sources say the skier, descending alone at Pic d’Endron in Ariège, likely triggered the slide as the avalanche bulletin stood at 3 out of 5 above 2,000 meters.
- Rescuers classified the Pic d’Endron avalanche as size 4, a very large slide with debris spanning more than 600 meters of vertical and over a square kilometer.
- PGHM located the French victim using his avalanche transceiver and attempted resuscitation before he was pronounced dead, and no judicial procedure has been opened.
- In Austria, police recovered a Slovak tourer on Plattenspitze under more than two meters of snow without a transceiver, bringing the season’s national toll to about 31 deaths since October.