A 39-year-old French skier is alive after spending more than 36 hours trapped in a crevasse with a fractured femur and a broken lower leg — a rescue his own rescuers have called miraculous. The story is a stark reminder of what early-season conditions in the high Alps can do, even to experienced ski tourers.
The skier set out from the village of Bramans on November 7, slept in a mountain hut, and began climbing Pointe Sommeiller, a 10,932-foot peak on the French-Italian border about 100 miles east of Grenoble. While booting up a steep, snow-loaded chute in crampons, his weight triggered a slab avalanche that swept him into a crevasse. With no cell service, he abandoned his gear and crawled roughly the length of a football field along a sloping passage inside the ice, eventually reaching a chamber about 50 feet below the surface — too deep and too steep to climb out of on broken legs.
A worried relative raised the alarm late on November 8. Searchers worked until around 2 a.m. before avalanche risk halted them overnight, with snowfall forecast. A helicopter spotted debris the next morning, and after more than five hours of probing and digging, crews heard his voice 50 feet beneath them. Rescuers pulled him out hypothermic but conscious, winched him down 650 vertical feet, and flew him to a hospital in southeastern France. In total, the operation involved 22 CRS mountain-rescue officers, six military police rescuers, and three helicopters.
For anyone eyeing a backcountry ski trip in the Alps, the takeaways are blunt. November snow sits on shallow, unstable bases, and solo travel — like this skier's — removes the person who could dig you out within the critical first minutes. The CRS Savoie team put it simply: plan routes and gear around current conditions, and know when to turn back. Their line is worth pinning to the fridge: the mountain will always be there tomorrow.
This wasn't recklessness — it was a fit, prepared tourer on a well-known summit caught by a slide in marginal conditions. That's exactly the point for ordinary travellers: early-season ski touring in places like the Haute-Maurienne carries real consequence, and a PLB or satellite messenger, a partner, and a willingness to cancel are what separate stories like this one from memorial articles.
