
Five of the six ski climbers who had been missing for two days in the Swiss Alps have been found dead. This was announced by the police of the canton of Valais, which is continuing the search for the sixth missing person.
Despite the bad weather conditions, the rescue team that was sent to the scene "discovered the bodies of five of the six missing persons", according to the police statement.
The six Swiss ski climbers, five of whom were found dead, have been missing since Saturday. They are aged between 21 and 58 and five of them belong to the same family from Valais, while another person, a woman, comes from the canton of Friborg.
Some of them were experienced mountaineers and some were training for a world-famous mountaineering race scheduled for April, the Patrouille des glaciers, whose route also runs along the Zermatt-Arolla route they were following.
The alarm was raised on Saturday afternoon at around 16:00 by a family member who was waiting for the group in Arolla, in Val d'Hérens. A phone call made a little later, at 17:19, from one of the six missing people, allowed them to be located in the Col de la Tete Blanche sector, about 3,500 meters above sea level.
During the night between Saturday and Sunday, five Swiss rescuers attempted to reach the group on foot from Zermatt, but due to terrible weather conditions and the risk of avalanches they were forced to give up. The alarm was also given by the Alpine Rescue Service of the Aosta Valley, with the hope that the weather conditions on the southern side would allow intervention by helicopter. Yesterday, in another accident, an off-piste skier died in hospital in Sion (Switzerland) from injuries sustained after being hit by an avalanche in Val Ferret, Switzerland.