Two Britons killed in avalanche in French Alps were with an instructor

Two British skiers were among three people who died after an avalanche swept through an off-piste area of Val d’Isère in the French Alps on Friday, February 13, it has been confirmed. The third person was a French national.

Six people in total were caught in the slide, which occurred around midday in the Manchet valley sector of the Savoie resort. 

Three died despite a rapid intervention by emergency services, local authorities said. An investigation has been opened by the Albertville prosecutor’s office.

The two Britons, who have not been publicly named, were part of a group of five skiers accompanied by a professional instructor. The instructor was unhurt. 

A third member of the group, also British, suffered minor injuries. The French victim was skiing alone in the same sector, said prosecutor Benoît Bachelet.

All those caught in the avalanche were equipped with emergency beacons, permitting rescuers to find them quickly.

The accident came a day after Savoie had been placed under a rare red avalanche alert by state-forecaster Météo-France, signalling what forecasters described as an “exceptional risk situation”. 

The warning, issued on Thursday, February 12, has only been used twice before in 25 years: in January 2018 in the Haute-Maurienne area of the Alps and in January 2013 in the Pyrenees.

Although the red alert has since been lifted, the avalanche risk remains significant on February 15 at level 3 out of 5 across much of the Alps.

25 deaths during ski season

Heavy snowfall linked to Storm Nils brought between 60cm and 100cm of fresh snow to parts of the Alps earlier this week, with locally higher accumulations in the Mont Blanc massif. 

Large to very large avalanches have been observed, in some cases reaching the bottom of valleys at around 1,100m.

The latest deaths bring the number of people killed in avalanches in France since the start of the winter season to 25, most of them since January. 

A particularly deadly weekend on January 10 and 11 left six people dead, including two in Val d’Isère.

Several Alpine resorts closed all or part of their ski areas on Thursday in response to the red alert. 

In nearby Tignes, residents were ordered to remain indoors overnight from Thursday to Friday because of the risk of further slides.

On the same day as the Val d’Isère tragedy, a 23-year-old British skier was buried under around 1.5m of snow in an off-piste sector of Tignes but was rescued alive within minutes by ski patrols. 

He was located using his emergency beacon and extracted conscious and unharmed.