Tignes avalanche March 7th 2017, Carline Piste
Henry was interviewed today on Sky News about the Tignes avalanche on the Carline piste. You can watch the interview here
What do we know about this avalanche event? Well not any more than you can read in the press reports and in the Mountain Echo. Most importantly no-one was seriously hurt. Although I imagine many were very shocked. We do not expect avalanches to cross the piste. There will be an official investigation and the report from that will reveal what the implications are. The resort closed the area immediately afterwards which seems like the right response whilst they assess the situation.
Questions being asked about whether they were right to open the piste this morning. With the wisdom of hindsight maybe it seems like it was wrong to open the piste. But hindsight is easy, foresight is harder. The risk assessment would suggest that the run was not exposed to a dangerous level of risk and that was confirmed since no-one was hurt. There was a slide that crossed a piste and this caught some skiers and boarders. I am sure the authorities will take this very seriously. We will have to see what the official report says.
Our tip from this incident
This avalanche could have been triggered by a skier above, it could have been spontaneous, it could have been triggered by the skiers on the piste, we do not know. The lesson for those of us who go off-piste is to make sure we never trigger an avalanche onto a piste. This is potentially very easy to do and the result could be fatal. Always think not just about the impact on you, but also the impact on skiers below. If there are skiers below make sure there is no risk at all.