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Snowfield at Tête Blanche

Photo: Valais cantonal police / KEYSTONE / dpa

The ski tourers who were surprised by a snowstorm in the Swiss Alps apparently wanted to build shelter from the weather.

"We saw that the ski tourers had tried to build a cave and protect themselves from the wind," said Anjan Truffer, head of rescue at Air Zermatt, to the "Walliser Boten".

The tour-goers were “very poorly equipped,” Truffer told SRF.

“It was pretty pointless with those little shovels in the hard snow.”

"The picture we found was ugly," he said.

Panic probably broke out on site because people were scattered.

At an altitude of 3,500 meters it was probably around minus 15 degrees on Sunday night.

The exact circumstances are still unknown.

The rescue workers discovered five of the six missing ski tourers dead on Sunday evening in the area of ​​the Tête Blanche, which is over 3,700 meters high.

The search continues for the sixth.

Tour between Zermatt and Arolla

The group had been on the ski touring route between Zermatt and Arolla since Saturday morning.

Since she did not arrive at her destination, a concerned relative raised the alarm.

Late Saturday afternoon, one of the missing people managed to contact the police via cell phone.

This made it possible to locate the group, the authorities said.

But stormy weather and the risk of avalanches made it difficult for rescue workers to respond.

"Despite the storm and snowfall and at night, an Air Zermatt helicopter took off to fly five rescue specialists from Zermatt as far into the area as possible," said Air Zermatt.

"However, the attempt to rescue the six alpinists by land had to be aborted due to the very bad weather conditions and the associated dangers."

According to information from the newspaper Le Nouvelliste, all of the dead belong to a family from the Swiss canton of Valais.

It is said to be three brothers, her uncle and her cousin.

Two people buried

The victims did “everything they could to survive,” said a police spokesman.

But the temperatures were extremely low.

It remained unclear how experienced the ski tourers were.

"When we arrived, we saw two people lying in the snow," said Air Zermatt rescue chief Truffer to SRF.

»We then found two more people in the same place.

But they were buried in snow.”

“A strong storm with heavy rainfall was announced for Saturday,” said Truffer, according to the Swiss “Tages-Anzeiger”.

"The meteorological conditions with avalanche level 4 were not suitable for such a tour." A lot of snow fell within a short period of time.

Every effort was made to find the missing people alive, the police said.

According to the police, a total of eight helicopters and dozens of mountain rescuers were deployed.

“The cooperation between the individual organizations worked well,” said the police spokesman.

Evaluation of cell phones

The authorities' cyber and IT specialists evaluated the data from the missing people's cell phones.

“These analyzes made it possible to confirm the mountaineers’ likely whereabouts in the mountain,” the police said on Monday.

According to official information, the cause of death of the five tourers who have now been found is not yet clear.

For now it remains unclear whether an avalanche led to the death of the five people or whether they froze to death.

The public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the exact circumstances of the events, said Attorney General Béatrice Pilloud.

In memory of the victims on Platform X, Swiss Federal President Viola Amherd wrote: "Our mountains have once again shown how dangerous they can be."

kub/dpa