Ski tour accident in Valais (2018)

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Route La Serpentine : View from Col du Tsijiore Nouve (approx. 3450 m) up to Col du Brenay (3615 m). The Pigne d'Arolla is partially visible on the left edge of the picture.

Seven people died in a ski tour accident in Valais . 14 ski tourers got caught in a storm on Sunday, April 29, 2018 when they were on the La Serpentine route. They broke at the mountain hut Cabane des Dix 2928  m above sea level. M. and wanted to reach the Cabane des Vignettes ( 3160  m ). The group was traveling near the Pigne d'Arolla when fog, strong winds and snowfall occurred. The route between the two huts is considered to be demanding, is 8.13 km long and includes an ascent of 980 m. For several kilometers you are above 3600 meters.

While several deaths in avalanches -Unglücken are not exceptional, which provided Unterkühlungstod so many tourers stir.

Course of events

The 14 people belonged to two groups that stayed in the Dix hut.

Everyone involved left around 6:30 a.m. Ten of the alpinists were out and about with a mountain guide from Italy who lives in the Ticino Muggio Valley . He ran an alpine-oriented travel agency . The mountain guide was very experienced and had already climbed four of the so-called Seven Summits and three eight-thousanders . In addition, several participants in this group had many years of experience with ski tours; one of them had climbed the 6960 m high Aconcagua the year before . They employed the mountain guide primarily to organize the multi-day ascent of the so-called Haute Route ; They would have undertaken shorter tours on their own.

The other four people were French and without a mountain guide.

For the group of ten it was the penultimate day of the Haute Route, which leads from Chamonix to Zermatt . The highest part of the route and the part that is most exposed to the weather lies between the Dix and Vignettes huts.

A survivor from Italy reported that the temperature had dropped to −5 ° C to −10 ° C on Monday night and they had lost their bearings several times due to poor visibility. According to one participant, the mountain guide did not have an actual GPS device with him, which would have been helpful in the fog. However, he navigated with a GPS app on his mobile phone, which is common among mountain guides, while one participant carried a GPS device on which the summer instead of the winter route was saved. There are indications that the mountain guide's mobile phone was not working as intended. Between 11 a.m. and 12 noon, the mountaineers arrived in the summit area of ​​the Pigne d'Arolla. From there, the route to the Vignettes Hut is less than 3 km (with an ascent of 100 meters and a descent of 700 meters).

Since the visibility was too poor, they did not take a break and continued the route on foot with crampons. In the hours that followed, people tried unsuccessfully to find the Vignettes Hut, with only a few meters of visibility, in a sloping, glaciated terrain. The cairn , which on a clear path to the Vignettes Hut has, they did not find. (Without this signpost, tourers tend to intuitively descend along the fall line ; from there, the further way to the hut is much more arduous.) The mountain guide could not use his satellite phone due to battery problems. According to one survivor, they had to turn back four times to find the right path.

According to rescue workers, the ground at the scene of the accident was as hard as concrete; the group had therefore not been able to dig themselves into the snow to protect themselves from the weather. The scene of the accident was only 400 meters from the rescuing Vignettes hut, at an altitude of 3270 m. On Monday morning at 6.30 a.m., an alpinist heard calls for help and the keeper of the Vignettes hut alerted the rescue workers. When they arrived at the scene of the accident by helicopter, the mountain guide had already been killed in a fall. According to tour participants, he had left the group to get help. His body was found just below the place where the rest of the alpinists had been waiting. The people, some of whom were critically hypothermic, were rescued with a total of seven helicopters from Air-Glaciers , Air Zermatt and Rega ; Around 12.30 p.m. all participants were in clinics. Six of the tourers died there, including the wife of the mountain guide.

Since overnight stays in huts have to be registered in advance for the safety of the tourers, the late alerting of the rescue workers caused astonishment among some experts. According to the magazine Outside , the mountain guide originally wanted to head for the Nacamuli hut and, based on the weather forecast, decided to visit the Vignettes hut. At least some of the participants were aware of the bad weather development.

In the same weather conditions, two young alpinists also died of hypothermia on the Mönch . In both accidents, the search for survivors was hampered by the weather. An alpinist also died of hypothermia on Monte Rosa.

Weather development during the accident

Foehn locations on the southern edge of the Alps lead to cloud formation and local precipitation due to the accumulation of water, some of which extend beyond the main Alpine ridge. At the high altitudes along the main ridge and the peaks, the clouds mean thick fog. The end of the foehn wind is a sure sign of a sudden fall in the weather .

The well-known meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann described the weather development in an editorial . All available weather models had already correctly calculated the end of the foehn wind on April 26th for the evening of April 29th. Likewise, the April 27 forecasts predicted the weather in the Arolla region as follows - and accurately -:

  • 7 am: Gusts of 50–75 km / h
  • Midday: first gusts of wind with 100 km / h
  • 1 p.m .: wind increases, moderate snowfall
  • 5 pm: The temperatures are still relatively mild for this altitude (0 to –4 ° C), but the wind chill must be taken into account
  • 7 p.m .: Heavy snowfall (5–6 cm fresh snow in one hour)
  • 8 p.m .: gusts of wind at around 200 km / h, around 9 p.m. between 10 and 12 cm of fresh snow in one hour
  • After midnight: wind subsides, snowfall stops, but temperature drops to –10 ° C

According to the weather archive of the provider Meteoblue, 42.5 mm of precipitation, an average wind of 60 km / h and an average temperature of 2 ° C were predicted for the whole of April 29 and the location of the Vignettes hut.

Causes of misfortune

The main question among mountaineering experts was why none of the participants, some of whom were very experienced, had questioned the mountain guide's decisions, even though the weather had increasingly deteriorated. The mountain guide had hardly shared his intentions and information with the other participants; the organization, planning and management of the group was entirely up to him. When the ski tourers set off at the Dix Hut, several groups decided to descend to Arolla at the Vignettes Hut instead of continuing at a high altitude to Zermatt. The reason for this was the visibility and wind conditions there, which were already bad on the morning of April 29th. It remains to be seen why the mountain guide did not get information from the Vignettes hut over the phone. Research by Outside magazine suggests that the initially quite good weather at the Dix Hut allayed the concerns.

It was irrelevant that the participants were not equipped for an emergency overnight stay in the open air. (While the accommodations in the USA are usually further apart and poorly equipped, which requires a higher degree of autonomy, European mountaineers can travel with lighter equipment.) Another point is that the mountain guide did not have redundant orientation aids.

Since there were no fatalities in the French group, there is a possibility that they were better prepared for a worsening weather.

Victim

According to press releases from the Valais canton police:

  • Five people suffered mild hypothermia. There are three French (55, 57 and 58 years old), a German (48) and an Italian (50).
  • The 59-year-old leader of the group of ten died on site in a fall.
  • Two couples from Italy died in the hospital, as well as a 52-year-old Bulgarian and a 42-year-old Italian.

See also

Web links

  • Disaster in the Alps. In: Outside. September 13, 2018, accessed March 31, 2019 . Report about the accident (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ routes 460b and 460a according to the Swiss Skitourenkarte that of SAC and Swisstopo is published
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Disaster in the Alps. In: Outside. September 13, 2018, accessed March 31, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Tommaso P. survived the night of horror on the mountain: "Now I know what hell is". In: Aargauer Zeitung / watson.ch. May 2, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c Disaster in Valais: A mountain guide who died did not let the ski tour group down. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 3, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 .
  5. ↑ to the ski tour map on map.geo.admin.ch
  6. ↑ Jörg Kachelmann: Of surprising snowstorms and the truth. May 4, 2018, Retrieved May 4, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Weather archive Pointe des Vignettes. In: meteoblue.com. May 3, 2018, accessed May 4, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Communiqués pour les médias. In: Cantonal Police Valais. Retrieved May 4, 2018 . (see May 1 and May 2, 2018)