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A 60-year-old tourist was killed in an avalanche whilst heli-skiing the steep slopes of Totara Peak in the Ragged mountain range - Source: ONE News -
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An alpine skier from Australia has died after being buried by an
avalanche in the Southern Alps in Canterbury.
The 60-year old man was one of a group of five, including three tourists and two guides from Alpine Guides, skiing in the Ragged Range, near Methven, despite a high risk of avalanche in the area.
The two other tourists, believed to be father and son, were also buried, but not injured.
"The guide has skied down and stopped and waited then the three clients have skied towards him and an avalanche has been triggered, burying all three clients," Senior Constable Brent Swanson said.
The two guides dug them out but were unable to revive the man who was buried the deepest in about a metre and a half of powered snow, despite only taking six minutes to reach him, he told Radio New Zealand.
"The guides are well trained in this situation and they've obviously done a good job of getting the clients out today."
Police, who were alerted about 1pm, said everyone else was safely removed from the mountain this afternoon.
Apline Guides, one of the most respected heli-skiing companies in the South Island, had not had a fatality for 20 years or so and was shaken by the death.
Police, the Department of Labour and the Mountain Safety Council were investigating the incident and the coroner would investigate the cause of death.
Mountain Safety Council avalanche programme manger Steve Schreiber said the heli-skiing company had assessed the avalanche risk was high, but it was not unusual to take people out anyway.
"I think the way they manage the situation is to alter the degree of the terrain. They used the very simple terrain process today and they were using low-angled slopes," he told Radio New Zealand.
The group would have been skiing for four of five hours before triggering the avalanche, which was about 200 metres wide, containing 100 metric tonnes of debris.
"It was a relatively big avalanche."
It was "pretty remarkable" the victim had only been buried for six minutes, Schreiber said.
"That's a very, very short time for this kind of deep burial...the reality of it was that the snow itself was very soft so they were able to dig through it very, very quickly."
Statistics showed a person buried for up to 18 minutes had a 93% chance of survival.
He did not know what had caused the man to die but trauma was the primary cause for short burial.
"My understanding is that this gentleman was about 60 years of
age and that they went to him very, very quickly," Schreiber
said.
"So I suspect that there was something else going on, maybe an
underlying illness that was related to this."
Both guides were experienced and the clients had skied with the operation before.
The company had active safety measures in place, Schreiber said.
"I like to think that the avalanche game is a bit like chaos theory. It's really about temporary stability. It's never absolutely safe, it's never absolutely unsafe.
"...I think it's premature to criticise or not, I think we need to know more about what happened".
After weeks of cold southerly conditions, a change to warm westerlies triggered dangerous avalanche conditions, the Mountain Safety Council said.
Large avalanches have tumbled down valleys in the Mackenzie Country, Mt Cook village, and at South Island ski areas in the past two days.
The council's avalanche forecasters were concerned about conditions and warned of a high danger.
Canterbury conditions were listed as posing a considerable risk.
The council has warned skiers, snowboarders, climbers and
trampers to avoid back-country travel until further notice.
Do you have any images of the avalanche? Send them to news@tvnz.co.nz
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