BERN, SWITZERLAND - A 46-year-old man from Zug died after he crashed while skiing in Grindelwald Tuesday afternoon 7 February. The man was coming down the First in the area of Horbach, with relatives, when he crashed, without anyone else involved. When he failed to get up, emergency help was called, but the man was declared dead on the slopes by the Rega rescue crew.
Police are investigating the cause of his death.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A German who was ski-touring in Zermatt lost his life Sunday. Elsewhere in the Lake Geneva region there were a number of serious accidents, from fires to road crashes.
The 52-year-old German was part of a group of five people who had been at the mountain hut Brittania. They were heading towards the Monta Rose hut, having crossed the Adler pass, and were below the second hut when the man was caught by an avalanche at 20:40 His fellow skiers immediately raised the alert and police, a medical team and Air Zermatt were sent to the rescue. His body was found under 2.2 metres of snow.
Road accident closed lake road near Gland Sunday
The lake road (N1) was closed to traffic Sunday afternoon 20 March for two hours following an accident at 15:10 at the Messerin intersection between Prangins and Gland.
An 18-year-old driver was hit by a car driven by a 23-year-old woman who failed to yield to the first driver. Both were injured, with the first driver trapped in his car. They were taken to hospital via ambulance. Police report that their lives are not in danger.
Fire in the centre of Sierre, another in Vaud
Fire Saturday morning in Sierre, Valais
Forty firefighters from Cossonay in canton Vaud were called to Dizy after a fire started in the kitchen of a village house Saturday at 09:00. Two men in their 70s were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.
A fire in the centre of Sierre, on the rue Glarey, caused serious damage and sent one person to hospital with burns to the hands. The fire started for reasons that have not been determined, at 07:00 Friday 19 March. Six residents of the building were evacuated.
Zermatt, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 22-year-old man from canton Valais was killed Saturday night on the outskirts of Zermatt, following a ski accident. The youth left a “public establishment” on the slopes, a few hundred metres from the village, say cantonal police, carrying a young woman on his back as he skied down a floodlit piste. Shortly after joining the piste he crashed into a woman on a snowboard.
The young man went into the safety nets at the edge of the piste but was critically injured, and he died soon afterwards.
The two women were slightly injured.
Police have opened an investigation into the accident. This is the second accident in two days on slopes near Zermatt.
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The skier who was killed 2 February in an avalanche in Crans-Montana has been formally identified by DNA tests, police in Valais announced Friday: a 40-year-old Canadian, resident in Valais.
Surefoot staff in Verbier have confirmed to GenevaLunch that the skier was Scott Mann, manager of the ski boot specialty shop in Verbier. He was a popular, well-known and very experienced off-piste skier who knew the area well and who had often skied around Mont Bonvin, where he lost his life Wednesday.
The avalanche was 50 metres wide and 700m long, on a very steep run.
One of his friends told GenevaLunch “Scott had skied that face countless times and it is known to be his mountain because of this. Because the conditions have been really poor in terms of snow this year, i think everyone was just waiting for a dump of the good stuff, and that is why he would have decided to go up there and take the risk because it was the first chance for a good off piste ski and this was his favourite face to ski in deep pow. . .He was a good skier and he knew what he was doing and the risk he would be taking to go up there.”
Surefoot also has a shop in Crans-Montana, which Mann had managed, and he was well known in the resort as well.
International sports, skiing
Austrian skier Hans Grugger
Update 14 March Innsbruck, Austia (GenevaLunch) – Skier Hans Grugger, 29, critically injured in a fall during training in Kitzbuehel, Austria 20 January, was taken out of intensive care 21 February, and photos show him walking, a rapid initial recovery that doctors credited to his superb physical condition, according to the International Ski Federation.
The Austrian national champion was able to speak a few words and press his hand when prompted by 1 February, after being brought out of an induced coma, but he was still sleeping most of the time, doctors reported. He was taken off a respirator Monday 31 January.
Grugger spent several hours in surgery for head injuries following the accident and doctors initially said it would be another few weeks before a full prognosis can be made. He hit his head hard on landing, following a jump where he lost control. He also broke ribs and suffered lung damage in the fall.
By the third week in February, however, he was receiving several forms of therapy daily and responding well, with the outlook far brighter than the accident at first prompted observers to expect.
Links to other sites: AFP, FIS ski federation Grugger updates, Grugger home page (Ge)
Background, GenevaLunch
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Austrian skier Hans Grugger, critically injured Thursday 20 January in training on the tough Strief run at Kitzbuehel, Austria, will remain in an artificial coma for now, but his situation is stable, according to Dr Alois Obwegeser, neurosurgeon at the Innsbruck University hospital where Grugger had emergency surgery. Obwegeser says the 29-year-old, who has won numerous medals, is out of immediate danger, but the next three to four days will be critical, and it will be a month before doctors will be able to provide a prognosis.
The surgeon gave an update on the skier’s condition at a press conference in Innsbruck Friday morning.
The Kitzbuehel races will go ahead as planned; the course itself has not been called into question in the accident.
Olympic downhill champion Didier Defago
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss skier and Olympic downhill champion Didier Defago will likely be out for the season, after tearing a knee ligament during a fall in training in Zermatt Wednesday 15 September.
The 32-year-old skier will be operated on Saturday at the Hopital de la Tour in Geneva by the ski team’s head doctor, Oliver Siegrist.
Champery, Valais (GenevaLunch) – A body, not dressed in ski clothes, was found under the snow by a skier in Champery, close to the Grand-Paradis chairlift Saturday 13 February. Police believe the person may have died there before the winter snows arrived, but no details are available yet.
Rescuers say finding a healthy survivor who had been under an avalanche for 17 hours is a rare experience. Swiss media flocked to the bedside of Cédric Genoud in Sion, where he is being observed for two days.
Update 09:31 Sion, canton Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Cédric Genoud, the 21-year-old who survived 17 hours under an avalanche and was rescued Sunday near Evolène, recounts his ordeal in a lengthy interview on TSR and in the Tribune de Genève.
The EPFL student says he decided to ski off-piste for the first time without the equipment for it, and when he was caught by an avalanche the only thing he was able to do was move his head and make a small air pocket with his helmet, a move that saved him.
He remained conscious during the night, in part because the pain in one leg that was twisted kept him awake – and for the first time in his life he prayed, and then he began to hope that animals would smell and find him. He ate snow to keep from being dehydrated. But he never gave up hope or let go of his desire to live.
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.
Myles Robinson and his sister Cara
Update 2 21:37 Wengen, canton Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “We think he must be here somewhere, maybe in a house,” Sarah Robinson, mother of missing British 23-year-old tourist Myles Robinson, told GenevaLunch Saturday evening 26 December. Her son disappeared in the early hours of Tuesday 22 December from the small Alpine resort of Wengen, not far from Interlaken, without a trace. The young man was at the Blue Monkey bar in the car-free resort above Lauterbrunnen, then walked an old family friend home and chatted with her for a while before heading back to his family’s place at 02:00, a 200-metre walk. It was a clear night.
Myles Robinson has not been seen or heard from since.
He was expecting his girlfriend to join the family for New Year’s and he had just been hired for a job he was looking forward to, with a financial firm in London.
Police and the family have appealed to villagers to look everywhere for the missing man. His mother says that she takes hope from a tall, dark-haired cousin of Myles being asked on the streets if his name is Myles. “People are looking out.”
A police spokesperson told GenevaLunch Saturday, “We have no clues. Nothing. We called for witnesses and several people phoned, but they were mostly sightings from other villages and turned out to be false alarms.” He noted that the police can’t even say they suspect foul play because there are no clues on which to make judgements. The police investigation continues, focusing now on interviewing people around him.
Sarah Robinson says police have done a thorough job of contacting people who know her son well.
A search of the mountainside is unrealistic, given the rugged terrain – the area is famous for its cliffs, forests and some of the toughest skiing in Switzerland, including the Lauberhorn race. The police spokesperson told GenevaLunch that the Swiss Army loaned a helicopter for a flyover search of the area around the town, which turned up nothing.
But Myles Robinson was not lost while skiing: he was walking a short distance home from a bar in the centre of town at an hour when pre-Christmas revellers were still out. There is no evidence that he ever left the village, intentionally, accidentally, or through foul play.
“He doesn’t take drugs, he doesn’t smoke – he’d had a few drinks and might have been a bit tipsy but [the friend he walked home] says they talked for a while and he was fine,” Sarah Robinson says.
She is quick to say that the police “have been very good” and the family is getting help from a Swiss judge, but launching a search, for example a house to house hunt, in the town when there are no clues poses legal problems. Villagers are being asked to check every possible place, such as cellars and buildings they don’t use often.
“We know that his cell phone was still active at least at lunchtime Tuesday,” says his mother. But initial reports that it emitted a signal from the south end of Wengen have been put in perspective, given the realities of cell phones in the mountains. “We are unsure about the transmitters for Wengen and we’ve been told that, with the mountains, signals could bounce off of Murren or some other area.” Murren, Wengen and Grindelwald are three villages in the area that have long been favourites of the British, who helped develop the modern sport of downhill skiing in this area.
The Robinson family (father, mother, Myles and his sister Cara) whom the mother describes as “close”, has been coming to the resort for 15 years and Myles knows the area well. He is fit and an avid skier.
“He can’t just have disappeared without a trace!” Sarah Robinson insists. Several kinds of sniffer dogs have been used and they have not picked up any trail. Asked if they suspect he might have been pulled into a vehicle, which could explain the disappearance of his scent, she says, “It’s a car-free resort – I can’t imagine what kind of vehicle it would have been.” There are few roads down from the resort, and a vehicle leaving would most likely have been remarked by someone.
“We’re being as pro-active as we can. We’re talking to everyone we can. We want to keep this in front of the public. We’ve got to try to achieve something.”
The family is not discussing the case of Daniel Baptista, she says, “but we’re all aware of it.” Battista disappeared in 2006 from Wengen after taking mescaline, and there has been no sign of him since.
“At the end of the day, we just want to make sure we get him back. Alive, we hope.
“I’m living on hope at the moment.”
Ed. note: the disappearance of Myles has been followed closely by the UK media. Links: BBC, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Times, UK
Innsbruck, Austria (GenevaLunch) – The latest medical update on Swiss skier Daniel Albrecht, seriously injured during training 22 January, is that his condition remains stable but no operations are planned. Doctors say their greatest concern is bleeding around his lungs and he will be kept in an artificial coma to help the recovery of his lungs.
