A man who was snowshoeing with his family on Thursday in Savoy was miraculously saved from an avalanche which buried him for nearly three hours in the snow, according to the police and firefighters.
Read also: Savoie: an experienced touring skier dies in an avalanche
While walking in a forest near the resort of Val d'Isère, four members of the same family were caught in a large snow slide, three of them quickly managing to escape.
But the 50-year-old father found himself buried, say the gendarmes.
The emergency services then organized a vast search with a hundred people (mountain rescue, members of the ski lifts, etc.) to locate him.
The victim, who was not equipped with an avalanche victim detector, was finally found thanks to the location of his phone, say the gendarmes, and was able to be released under 2.5 meters of snow after 2 hours 40 research, alive.
According to the firefighters, if the man is doing "really very well" after such a duration of burial - we consider that the probability of survival in the snow collapses after only 20 minutes, for lack of air to breathe - he could be suffering from a fractured pelvis.
The avalanche risk was locally 5 out of 5 on Thursday, a very rare level, due to very heavy precipitation and an unstable snowpack - 60 cm of snow fell locally above 2000 meters above sea level since Wednesday evening.
Météo France has placed Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Isère and Hautes-Alpes in orange vigilance for the day of Friday.
The authorities call on practitioners not to venture into the mountains in the coming days because of these exceptional risks, whether in ski touring or snowshoeing.