Avalanche on Mont du Vallon, Meribel 18.03.11

Hopefully an educational video with permission given by the family and friends of the missing person.
An avalanche set off by a skier who cut above another person causing a slab to break loose which then crated a larger avalanche.

The person who created the avalanche can be seen in the very top left of the first photo. There are other onlookers on the ridge directly above where the skier got caught up and also one other person skiing who was near the bottom when the snow stopped... do not confuse this skier with the person who is now missing at the time of the upload. (3 days on)

Links to other sites which cover this incident:
http://www.henrysavalanchetalk.com/serious-avalanche-meribel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3E9IbA_jo&NR=1

http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?p=1759500

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/1014-six-dead-one-missing-in-french-av...

http://www.skiinfo.com/Community-Video-11956-en.jhtml?action=show&videoId...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• avalanch
• mont
• du
• vallon
• meribel
• french
• alps
• ski
• off
• piste
• accident
• missing
• person
• russian
• snow
• danger
• recco
• ice
• mountains

[davidzof]

They found the body of the victim in the lac du Borgne on the 4th July. RIP

[sunsnowguy]

@davidzof Thanks for that. I was expecting to receive a message like this sometime around now. At least the family will now know for sure.

[grizu24]

I know these backcountry area from my holidays. Use every time your avalanche equipment!

[sunsnowguy]

@grizu24 I will be equipped the next time i go off piste.... now i've seen what can happen!

[MartinMckaySkiing]

Stay safe

[sunsnowguy]

@longstag Very true, although it was about 36hrs non stop snow. The general view seems to be that prior to that the layer of snow which had thawd during the day then frozen again at night would just have had the new snow settle on top and build on it from there creating quite an unstable layer then as the temps started to rise in the sun it would not have taken much to move that top layer or slab.

We saw so many signs of smaller avalanches that afternoon, some where we'd been that morning!

[26trolles]

Yesterday the heavy machinery there worked. Have removed 5 m of snow. Today searches will proceed