Shock swept through a French ski resort after staff found a tourist dead inside a gondola that had just reached the mountain summit. The victim, a 53-year-old man, is believed to have suffered a cardiac arrest while travelling alone on a lift at the Val Cenis ski resort in Savoie.
He was found on the afternoon of January 6, prompting immediate emergency procedures. Two ski patrollers attempted to revive him using a defibrillator as emergency services and local police rushed to the scene. Despite their efforts, the man was pronounced dead at the mountain top.
Later that same day, tragedy struck again in the region at the nearby Les Menuires resort, also in Savoie, where a Spanish skier was discovered unconscious against a rock in an off-piste area in a separate fatal incident. Authorities are continuing to investigate both cases.
It comes just weeks after three people were killed after an avalanche hit a popular ski resort in Spain. Six people were caught up in the floods of snow that hurtled down the slopes of the Spanish Pyrenees, with three skiers dying from the avalanche.
The group became trapped in the snow after a fall at around 1 p.m. local time on December 29, and emergency services were alerted shortly thereafter.
Tragedy struck on December 28, when a five-year-old boy died after becoming trapped inside a moving ski travelator in front of his family.
The child, identified as Hinata Goto, had his right arm caught in the machine for around 40 minutes, during which rescuers were forced to dismantle the escalator in a desperate attempt to free him. He gradually lost consciousness as the ordeal unfolded.
Goto had been skiing with his family at the Asarigawa Onsen Ski Resort in Otaru, in Japan’s renowned winter sports region of Hokkaido, when the accident occurred as he stepped onto the moving walkway.