Avalanche Rescue at Les Crosets: James Mort’s Burial in the Swiss Alps

On 30 January 2015, Australian skier James Mort was swept into a terrain trap by an avalanche above Les Crosets, on the Swiss side of the Portes du Soleil, and buried under more than 1.5 metres of snow. His two ski partners had him out in under five minutes. The helmet-camera footage of that dig became one of the most watched avalanche rescues of the season.

Mort posted the video on his YouTube channel in March 2015 under the title “Swiss Avalanche: Complete Burial and Rescue”, with footage credited to his friend Daniel O’Sullivan. He was blunt about why he shared it: the clip, in his words, shows poor preparedness, and he wanted other skiers to learn from it.

Where the avalanche happened: Les Crosets in the Portes du Soleil

Les Crosets is a small ski village in the municipality of Val-d’Illiez, in the canton of Valais. At 1,670 metres it is the highest of the Swiss resorts in the Portes du Soleil, the large ski area that straddles the Franco-Swiss border between Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. It is also home to the Swiss Wall, a steep mogul run counted among the hardest pistes in the Alps.

The group was skiing off-piste on a slope Mort described as inside the resort boundary and not known for slides. The snowpack cracked, and the moving snow carried him down into a gully, the kind of terrain trap where debris piles up deep. Winter 2014/15 was a grim one in the European Alps, with more than 50 avalanche deaths recorded across the range.

The rescue: five minutes under the snow

The video picks up from O’Sullivan’s camera as he and the second skier reach the debris. Mort’s partners were not wearing avalanche transceivers, but they did carry a probe and a shovel. Mort recalled that his last movement before the snow closed over him was to push his left arm and ski pole upwards, and that tip gave his friends a point to dig towards.

The footage then shows the hardest part of any burial: frantic shovelling through dense, set avalanche debris until his face is cleared and he can breathe. Mort wrote a detailed first-person account of the experience on his blog, and the story was picked up by NBC News, Global News and Australia’s Mountainwatch.

Why minutes matter in an avalanche burial

Mort’s rescue landed inside the window that decides most burials. A Swiss study of 422 buried skiers found that 92 percent survived when they were dug out within 15 minutes, while only about 30 percent were still alive after 35 minutes. Most of those deaths come from suffocation, not injury.

That is why companion rescue matters more than outside help. A helicopter team in the Alps can take three quarters of an hour to arrive, so the people already on the slope are the victim’s best chance. Two further points from the research are worth knowing:

• Debris settles like concrete. A strong metal shovel and an efficient digging technique save more time than any other single factor once the victim is located.
• Depth is critical. Survival from burials deeper than two metres is rare, and terrain traps such as gullies and creek beds are exactly where snow piles up that deep.

Avalanche safety kit and training for off-piste skiing

Mort’s message to viewers was simple: off piste, decision-making comes first, and everyone should carry a transceiver, probe and shovel. Each tool has a clear job:

• Transceiver (beacon): transmits on 457 kHz and lets companions home in on a buried signal from up to about 80 metres away. Every member of the group needs one, switched on.
• Probe: pinpoints the exact location and depth of the victim before digging starts.
• Shovel: moves the dense debris. Metal blades outlast plastic ones under load.

Practise with your kit before the season starts and check the SLF avalanche bulletin every morning before skiing off-piste in Switzerland. The Swiss Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research publishes regional danger levels and snowpack notes daily through the winter.

Related reading

• The snowmobile avalanche rescue near Sicamous
• Sorin Radu’s avalanche footage
• Avalanche Preparation: Training, Terrain, Equipment and Group Decisions
• Cory Richards on Photography, Survival and Finding a Direction
• Aymar Navarro’s Avalanche Incident in the Spanish Pyrenees
• Iain Stewart’s Avalanche Documentary: Stories and Snow Science
• Sorin Radu’s Snowboarding Avalanche Footage
• Roof Ice Falling at a Lodge in Grapevine, Texas

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