Five skiers found dead and one missing in Swiss Alps

Daily Life, Swiss News and General Topics
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A recollection of one of the survivors of the 2018 tragedy:

One woman was completely exhausted, so the mountain guide decided to stay where the group was. It later turned out that the hut was only 550 metres away. The group had not been able to dig in, everything was frozen.

The group stayed put in the middle of the storm. Their equipment and several insulating blankets had been blown away by the strong wind. For three to four hours I heard the moaning of the others. Then it got quieter and quieter." According to the 78-year-old, his hypothermic body began to hallucinate: “It was like being on drugs.”

Cattori then lost consciousness. “I didn’t see the rescue team arrive at seven o’clock. I had already been unconscious for half an hour. My body temperature was still 26 degrees and my heart rate was five beats per minute.”

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Five bpm and 26° body temperature is pretty much as close as to death as you can get.
On cursory look, he could have been pronounced dead at the scene


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I don’t know why these aren’t more popular here:

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89 CHF

Emergency blankets do blow away and don’t trap the heat which means they are basically useless.

With the shelter in the photo, you all stand holding the shelter and then all sit down at the same time, pulling the material under your backsides and sit on it ) on your rucksacks).
They are windproof and even on a really cold day windy, they heat up amazingly with body heat.
I’ve used one in a blizzard on a mountain and they are amazing.

Means you don’t need to dig a snow hole either.

Another plus point is it’s much easier to see for potential rescuers.

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Here is a short video of the Tete Blanche area today. I can imagine that they were totally blind out there.

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It is scarily similar to the Haute Route incident that was posted by rainer_d. That was equally as tragic, with lives lost a several hundred metres from a warm shelter, including the guide.

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Well, for the nerds that like to look at data. Warning, this is a full armchair in home office at 23°C mental onanism exercise.

Guys were found near the summit of the TĂȘte Blanche, the IT/CH border. Not at the summit, but quite probably above 3’000 m above sea level. The map below is from meteosuisse, triangles are stations that measure precipitation, circles are full ones that measure wind, temp, sun radiation, etc. So, there is no meteo station nearby. Zermatt and EvolĂšne are relatively far away and both below 2’000m.

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Gorgergrat station is even farther away, but it’s at 3’129 meters above sea level. I guess it could be a good proxy of what happened above 3’000m last weekend. Temperature was around -10°C in the night from Saturday to Sunday.

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What is really interesting is the wind. Before the weekend, between 10-30 kmh, that cool mountain breeze. During the night from from Friday to Saturday it gained strength, and reached 60 kmh during the first hours of Saturday. It changed direction, slowed down to 20 kmh at 9h00 and then increased to 1 second long gusts at 128 kmh at 15h00. Wind kept above 100 kmh until noon of Sunday. Then, back to that cool mountain breeze.

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It’s feasible to assume -10°C, wind around 100 kmh, that’s a wind chill of -25°C according to this online calculator. It may have been even colder or wind blowing stronger, no way to know. Also, going up the mountain leads to sweating, which is not good survival in the cold. Only sure thing is that the outcome of the natural experiment is that digging a hole was not that useful.

@Tom1234, I guess anyone can make the mental experiment of riding on the roof of a car at 100+kmh and trying to unpack a 1.5x1.5m tarp, then try to get inside it. Are you just blow by the wind while trying to hold the tarp? Are your freezing hands inside gloves capable to enough to hold the tarp while the whiteout makes hard to see your own hands?. FSS, let’s assume you and your buddies are super strong and can hold the tarp, is the tarp sheared to pieces by the wind? Just look at that wind plot once again and realize successfully unpacking and getting inside a wind shelter was a matter of minutes. If the decision was not taken at the right time, there was not much left to do after the wind picked up more speed. Sometimes things get that ugly that the only way to survive is not being there in first place.

So, awful conditions, poor guys. It’s sad that the decision process did not lead to the right answer.

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I’ve read that they were at around 3500 metres

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It’s seconds. Not minutes. Ideally, you’d be in it long before you lost all feeling in your fingers and then stay in it for a few hours.

Yes, they work in incredibly windy conditions. I’ve used them like that. They are designed for storms.
It’s not a tarp.

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Of course, not only a tarp. Made from some lightweight textile that blocks wind, and with some cuts and zippers to make a shelter. Ideally, it would be unpacked before wind picks up speed and you’re in whiteout conditions.

Back to original post, photos show that the guys did dig a hole in the snow, it did not work. A wind shelter only increases a bit the survival time at X temp and wind conditions. It may have been enough to survive or
skills, experience or physical strength are not enough to survive at some levels of exposure.

Shit happens, you cannot be in control of everything. That’s part of the allure. It’s also an issue to ponder: which are the events we can manage? Not as the one in thousand survival story, but at the 999/1000 week-end fun level.

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The forecast for Saturday and Sunday in the Zermatt area was awful, they should never have set off in the first place. Winds of 150km/h were forecast at altitude for Saturday and heavy snow for Sunday.

They were two teams of 3 training for the Patrouille des Glaciers, following the race route. They were wearing and carrying race kit (absolute bare minimum) and so not prepared for surviving a storm.

Very sad, but idiotic!

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Our daughter went to avalanche training in Valais last weekend. Ironically, an avalanche blocked the only road out, so they had to stay an extra night.

They went skiing on Saturday morning, but by noon, all lifts were shut down. While she and her friends hiked to the mid station, another group got stuck in a gondola for two hours. They were advised to use the foil blankets from their training, learning that the gold side should face outward.

Even though our kids weren’t in any danger, the winds were strong and visibility low. We were just happy when she made it back home safe.

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Some people make bad decisions sometimes, but this ended tragically. I see a lot of judgement (yes I know, everyone here would have been wiser, more prepared, luckier etc etc etc) and very little compassion in most of the posts I have read. I feel very sorry for them.

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Fair. But where was their compassion for the rescue teams who put their lifes on the line for them?

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Their families and friends are no doubt distraught but they probably don’t read this forum.

I think you are missing the point - especially with what I have posted (which seems to be what your post is hinting at). It’s not a question of hindsight being a wonderful thing it’s a question of (and this isn’t exclusive):

  • Reading and understanding the weather forecast - and acting on it.
  • Taking and knowing how to use correct bad weather equipment and clothing.

Luck doesn’t come into it here.

Unlucky is when you are on a groomed piste and you get injured in an avalanche triggered by someone in a closed area where they shouldn’t have been.
Unlucky is when you are in a queue for a ski lift and an out-of-control skier crashes into you.

As you are being quite judgmental yourself, what do you think was unlucky about what they did?

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Exactly!! As the partner of an ex-rescue guy, I can’t believe these people had the hubris to attempt this. Hubris is a killer.

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Exactly. They weren’t unlucky, they were irresponsible.

I looked at the weather forecast Friday afternoon, as I was planning some piste skiing in Zermatt on Saturday. It was clear the winds were going to be high at altitude and if lucky some low level skiing would be possible in the morning.

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Any activity comes with risk. The further or more extreme you go (up, down, cold, hot) the greater the risk, and the more you need to prepare for worst case.

Compassion doesn’t factor into an objective analysis
none of the six wanted to be careless or move into harms way. Simply and sadly, the group made the decision to commit themselves to a tour without worst-case preparation. They have paid for the decision with their lives.

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“The director of the Swiss Association of Mountain Guides, Pierre Mathey, told Blick that he would also have personally started a hike in Zermatt on Saturday, “because the weather was not so bad.” Mr. Truffer also indicated that the hikers wore light clothing of the same type as those worn by the Patrouille des Glaciers competitors.”

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I saw that. But even if you go you will have seen the forecast. So in my view then you (1) call the cabin for live conditions, (2) you take proper clothes, and (3) you turn around if weather starts looking dodgy. The fact that they were at the highest point of the tour when they got into the shit does not look like they had any intention of turning around. Obviously they also did not do (1) and (2).

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But further down:

The head of Air Zermatt’s emergency services, Anjan Truffer, reported on the weather conditions in the titles of the Tamedia and CH Media groups and in the NZZ. “Without judging anyone, we don’t go to the mountains in this weather,” he said.

And:

Interviewed by blue News, mountain expert and guide Evelyne Binsack herself canceled an expedition due to bad weather conditions last weekend.

So why is Pierre Mathey’s view so different from other experts’ views?