Lawinenunfall

Statistical key data on alpine accidents in 2017, presented by the Austrian Board of Trustees for Alpine Safety and the Alpine Police (BM.I): 283 people died in accidents in the Austrian Alps in 2017, 18 of them on ski tours, 13 while off-piste skiing and 27 while skiing/snowboarding on pistes and ski routes.

The Winter Report 2016/17 of the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF is online as a pdf. The review of the weather, snow cover and avalanche danger was already published in summer 2017, and the report has now been supplemented with a description of selected avalanche accidents.

The SLF's seasonal report on the 2016/17 avalanche winter in Switzerland is also available online. The report contains detailed information on the weather, snow cover and avalanche risk.

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2016/17. As always, the report contains not only statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated reports on specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF, the LWD Bavaria and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions.

The Austrian Alpine Association is once again offering evening lectures to get in the mood for the ski season, where winter sports enthusiasts can update their avalanche knowledge.

The sporty winter is far from over and is picking up speed again these days. The snow flurries are now moving to higher altitudes with steeper slopes on average and are hoping for a few more turns of fluffy powder, followed by sizzling firn and summer firn, before surviving the summer in a snow profile hole on the highest glaciers in the Western Alps in heat torpor. So it's time to sum up:

In Steinberg, where dozens if not hundreds of freeriders are out and about on good days, a huge avalanche broke loose. Fortunately at night, otherwise it could have ended in disaster. PG Conditions reporter Christian Berner describes his impressions.

She actually knew where the dangers lurked that day. Why didn't it stop her from climbing? A story about failure and the courage to talk about mistakes.

In an existing ascent track or on tracked slopes, the avalanche danger can be greater than on the same slope in untracked condition. What sounds absurd at first is easy to understand on closer inspection.

The assessment of the avalanche situation on a large scale is carried out for us by the situation report. We have to use this basis to assess the local hazard potential ourselves. This can be very easy today, very difficult tomorrow and hardly possible the day after tomorrow.

THE FOURTH PHASE is the third major film by and with Travis Rice - after "that's it that's all" from 2008 and "the art of flight" from 2011 - which have contributed greatly to Travis Rice's general, cross-industry fame.

Both the Austrian avalanche warning services and the SLF have now made their full seasonal reports available to download online. In both countries, the warmer than average 2015/16 winter season only really began at the start of 2016. The number of fatal avalanche accidents was slightly below the long-term average. In Austria, 14 people lost their lives in avalanches last winter, compared to 20 in Switzerland.