As of: March 12, 2024, 5:22 p.m
By: Kai Hartwig, Sandra Sporer
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A ski tour ends tragically for the participants.
Five of them are found dead, a sixth member is still missing.
Zermatt - The group, according to the newspaper
Le Nouvelliste
a family from the canton of Valais, had been on the ski touring route between Zermatt and Arolla in the Swiss Alps since Saturday morning (March 9).
When they failed to arrive at their intended destination, a concerned family member raised the alarm.
Now there is a sad certainty that the majority of those missing are dead - five of the six ski tour participants were found dead.
The tourers tried to survive by all means possible.
Just in February, a mother and her two children died in the Alps.
Missing ski tour group found dead - they were still trying to build a cave
On Monday, March 11th, the Valais cantonal police announced that the bodies of the ski tourers had been discovered the evening before in the area of the 3,706 meter high Tête Blanche.
“The sixth ski tourer has not yet been found.
The search for him is still ongoing,” it was further reported.
The victims had “done everything to survive,” said a police spokesman.
“We saw that the ski tourers had tried to build a cave and protect themselves from the wind,” reported Anjan Truffer, the head of the rescue operation at Air Zermatt, to the
Walliser Bote
.
Nevertheless, the temperatures were extremely low.
It remains unclear how experienced the ski tourers were and what equipment they had with them.
The rescue workers also did everything in their power to find the missing people alive.
Mountain rescuers and helicopters prepare to depart for Tête Blanche mountain in the Swiss Alps.
Five ski tourers were missing in Switzerland and were found dead at night.
© dpa/Wallis/Keystone cantonal police
Even special units were used in the complicated search operation
However, stormy weather and the risk of avalanches made the rescue operation considerably more difficult.
A total of eight helicopters and dozens of mountain rescuers were deployed.
“The cooperation between the individual organizations worked well,” praised the police spokesman.
In addition, cyber and IT specialists analyzed the data from the missing people's cell phones to determine their whereabouts.
“These analyzes made it possible to confirm the mountaineers’ likely whereabouts in the mountain,” the police said on Monday.
According to
Le Nouvelliste
, the air force and special units of the cantonal police were also deployed to rescue the missing ski tourers.
They are said to be three brothers, her uncle and her cousin.
The age of the six ski tourers was given as 21 to 58 years.
The cause of death of the dead ski tourers is not yet known
The exact cause of death of the five ski tourers found was not initially announced.
An avalanche or freezing could be possible causes of the death of the five people.
According to Attorney General Béatrice Pilloud, the responsible public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the exact circumstances of the incident.
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In February 2024, four skiers died in an avalanche.
In another case, however, the deployment of the informed mountain rescuers turned out to be unnecessary.
The reason stunned both them and the hut owner who had raised the alarm.
(kh/sp with dpa)
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