Majority of fatal ski accidents happen off-piste
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Majority of fatal ski accidents happen off-piste
Off-piste skiing accounts for 85% of fatal winter sports accidents, according to the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
A quarter of deaths in snow sports are caused by freeriders, but people also die time and again when snowshoeing off the marked routes. Only 15% of fatalities occur prepared slopes in ski resorts. Between 2014 and 2023, an average of 34 people died during winter sports in Switzerland every year.
Half of all fatal snow sports accidents are caused by avalanches, the report continued. Many factors such as snow conditions, snowpack structure, slope inclination, wind and temperature play a role, which is why it is extremely difficult to correctly assess the current avalanche risk.
+ ‘Valley of Death’: are the Swiss too tolerant of extreme sports?
The Council recommends consulting an avalanche expert guide or attending an avalanche course. It is also important to use emergency equipment correctly, consisting of an avalanche transceiver, probe and shovel. An avalanche airbag also reduces the risk of dying in an avalanche.
Routes should also be chosen with caution. According to the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, nine out of ten buried people trigger the avalanche themselves.
Translated from German by DeepL/mga
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
More
Flat-hunting in Switzerland’s cheapest and most expensive municipalities
More
Is Switzerland repeating England’s housing mistakes?
More
The Russia affair in the Swiss secret service: ‘This is espionage’
More
What a love of cat ladders says about the Swiss
More
Switzerland regains crown as world’s most competitive nation
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.