A tragic accident unfolded in the Swiss Alps. On Sunday, search parties recovered the bodies of five missing skiers. The search for a sixth person continues. 

The group, including a family of five from Valais, departed from Zermatt, a famous ski resort, on Saturday. They were reported missing in the Tete Blanche area. Authorities reported the skiers’ ages ranged from 21 to 58. While details about the dead are withheld, it was confirmed they were found in Tete Blanche on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Police said they were alerted by a family member who was meant to collect the group in the village of Arolla on Saturday afternoon and had become concerned when they failed to arrive.

CNN reported that search-and-rescue operations were launched on Saturday after the skiers went missing near the 3,706-meter-high (12,159 feet) Tete Blanche pass, en route to the village of Arolla. 

“At 5:19 p.m., a member of the group managed to contact the emergency services. This call enabled him to be located in the Tete Blanche pass area, at an altitude of around 3,500 meters” (around 11,480 feet), police said.

“A storm in the southern Alps and the danger of avalanches prevented helicopters and rescue columns from approaching the area,” police continued, adding that a team of five experienced rescuers attempted an overland approach from Zermatt overnight, but they had to give up at an altitude of over 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) due to “very poor weather conditions and the risks involved.”

Zermatt is a popular mountain resort renowned for skiing and attracts tourists from around the world.

Mountain rescuers and helicopters participate in a rescue mission the Tete Blanche mountain in the Swiss alps mountains, near Sion, Switzerland, Sunday, March 10, 2024. Five cross-country skiers have been found dead after going missing over the weekend near Switzerland’s famed Matterhorn, Swiss police said Monday.
| Photo Credit: AP

Five cross-country skiers — including members of the same Swiss family — were found dead along a high Alpine ridge after going missing over the weekend near Switzerland’s famed Matterhorn. Swiss police said Monday. Another skier remains missing.

Christian Varone, commander of Valais regional police, told a news conference in Sion, Switzerland, that six skiers set out in “relatively good” conditions on Saturday but that the situation deteriorated quickly. They were on a route between the resort town of Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn, and the village of Arolla, near the border with Italy.

Rescue authorities had already announced a search on Sunday in difficult weather conditions.

Mr. Varone said five of the six skiers were from a family from the Valais region, and a sixth person who lived in Fribourg in western Switzerland. He said they were aged between 21 and 58, without providing names or further details. He did not specify which person was still missing or indicate whether all the victims were relatives.

“Unfortunately this region is accustomed to tragedies like this,” he said, alluding to the deaths of seven hikers — six Italians and a Bulgarian — in the region in 2018.

A relative of the family members alerted police on Saturday after the group didn’t arrive in Arolla, as expected, on Saturday before nightfall.

One of the skiers was able to speak by phone with a rescue squad, paving the way for their location near the “Tête Blanche” (White Head) ridge at roughly 3,500 metres (11,500 feet), police said.

That triggered an immediate mobilization of search teams. However, they were forced to turn around. Another search, hours later, had to be suspended because of poor weather conditions including avalanche, high wind, fog and cold, police said.

Technical teams used mobile phone networks to pinpoint the location of the missing mountaineers. A helicopter squad then ferried in a team including a doctor, a police officer and two rescuers to a cabin on the “Dent Blanche” peak, near where they recovered the five bodies.

Swiss prosecutors said an investigation was underway into the exact circumstances of their deaths.

A search for the sixth person continues.