Five skiers found dead, one missing in Swiss Alps

The bodies of five missing skiers were found in the Swiss Alps on Sunday evening, while rescuers are still searching for a sixth person, local police said on Monday.

The group, which included five members of the same family, had set off from Zermatt, a popular ski destination, on Saturday morning and were reported missing in the Tête Blanche region, according to police in the canton of Valais.

The skiers were aged between 21 and 58, according to an earlier police statement reported by Reuters. The family members were from the Valais canton, while the sixth person is from the canton of Fribourg. Police did not reveal the identities of the dead skiers, whose bodies were found in Tête Blanche on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Police said they were alerted by a family member who was meant to collect the group in the village of Arolla on Saturday afternoon and had become concerned when they failed to arrive.

Search-and-rescue operations were launched on Saturday after the skiers went missing near the 3,706-meter-high (12,159 feet) Tête Blanche pass, en route to the village of Arolla. However, “very poor” weather conditions made operations “extremely delicate,” police said in a statement on Sunday.

“At 5:19 p.m., a member of the group managed to contact the emergency services. This call enabled him to be located in the Tête Blanche pass area, at an altitude of around 3,500 meters” (around 11,480 feet), police said.

“A storm in the southern Alps and the danger of avalanches prevented helicopters and rescue columns from approaching the area,” police continued, adding that a team of five experienced rescuers attempted an overland approach from Zermatt overnight, but they had to give up at an altitude of over 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) due to “very poor weather conditions and the risks involved.”

The operation included special units of the Cantonal Police, including a mountain group and technical and telecommunication officers, as well as rescuers from the Rescue Organization for the Canton of Valais (OCVS) and the Swiss Air Force.

The Zermatt-Arolla hiking route is part of the famous Haute Route trail between Chamonix, France, at the foot of Mont Blanc, and the base of the Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland.