Sion, canton Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 21-year-old Vaud man had the “extraordinary” chance to survive 17 hours after he was trapped by an avalanche near Evolene, say Valais police. He was conscious and suffered only mild hypothermia when he was found.
He was caught Saturday while skiing off-piste, but police point out that he was only 50cm under the surface, and a small amount of air passed through to the space he was able to free in front of his face. His family alerted police at 16:30 when he didn’t return, and a search team found an avalanche 50 metres wide and 150m long with a skier’s tracks that suddenly ran out under the avalanche, in the pas d’Arpilles area. They had to call off the search an hour after midnight, for safety reasons, then started again at dawn.
An Air Glacier helicopter flying over the avalanche as part of the search noticed that the snow appeared to be moving in one area, and searchers were able to dig him out there.
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News story, GenevaLunch, 7 February 2010.
Filed under: Society
Tags: 17 hours, alive, avalanche, found, skier, survived, Vaud
February 12th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
[...] talk in Swiss media all week has been about the miraculous rescue of 21-year-old Cédric Genoud, who spent 17 hours under an avalanche after giving in to the temptation to go off piste by himself [...]