Tracks from the skiers who triggered it. Classic start zone: Rollover with rocks.

A day late, the rescue heli.

This is the middle of the ski touring season, well, end of the middle, anyway, and the snow’s corned up beautifully, but don’t be lulled into thinking slide season is over. Five Czech mountaineers and one Slovakian were killed this weekend in an avalanche on a peak called Schalfkogel near Solden, Austria. The slide occurred Saturday, but rescuers were unable to reach the victims under today because of bad weather.

Head of the local search and rescue, Ronald Ribis, said: “Once the helicopters were able to land we uncovered the victims within an hour but all help came too late for them as they had been dead for several hours by that time.

“Four of the victims died immediately after they were buried under several tonnes of snow, while two of them were left with small pockets of air and therefore survived for a while but eventually froze to death.”

It has not been a good week for Europe. A few days ago, a big slide hit the Marmolada, the tallest peak in the Italian Dolomites. My friend Dan Patitucci, a photographer living in Italy, was on hand and offered this account on his website:

“I remember Andreas making some sort of surprised sound, before we all looked up. The avalanche seemed to release at the climber’s ski depot. What started as just some movement to our eyes, grew to an enormous, astounding, wave of snow, slabs and exploding debris. It came towards us like a wall of water released by a broken dam.

“My memory is of trying to follow all of the many falling bodies I could see in the top sections, avy course training tells you to watch them, but then Andreas yelled out, “Let’s get out of here!”. We all quickly spun around, pointed our tips downward, and traversed off and out of the way. The avalanche, at full bore, passed about 100 meters from us.”

To read the whole story and see photos, go to Dan’s site.

Tagged as: avalanche, europe, mountaineering