Broke with Nowhere to Ski

Written on November 11th, 2007 at 02:47 pm by Bill
Filed Under: Ski News

Last January in France a combination of fresh snow and winds created high avalanche dangers over much of the French Alps. This resulted in at least 5 deaths and a handful of other incidents.

One of those other accidents occurred at the Haute-Savoie resort of les Contamines-Montjoie and although reported by Pistehors.com at the time it passed almost without notice. Three skiers aged in their 20s, two from the Paris area and one local from St Gervais took the Croches chair and despite a local bye-law banning off piste skiing when the avalanche risk is high, posted at the bottom of the lift, launched onto the slopes of the Tierces where they triggered an avalanche. The slide caught two of the skiers and also hit a woman skiing on the open Tierces run. No-one was hurt but the lift company (the SECMH) who is responsible for piste safety chose to lodge a complaint with the prosecutor for reckless endangerment.

The three defendants, who claimed ignorance of the local regulations (in truth who reads the small print at the bottom of ski lifts?), were fined 500 euros each, ordered to pay for publication of the sentence in a local paper and, perhaps hardest of all given the good early season conditions, banned from skiing in France for a period of 12 months.

[Avalanche starters get year ski ban]

500 euros!!! We lived in Paris last year so we know that 500 euros is a lot more than 500 dollars. But as bad as the 500 euro fine is, the 1 year ban from skiing has got to hurt the worst.