Ski Club Of Great Britain.

verbier_ski_bum wrote: Well, it seems the law has a purpose to secure the jobs of locally qualified guides.

That would be in breach of the agreement on the free movement of persons that Switzerland concluded with the EU in 1999 in order to get access to the single market. There is no shortage of work for local guides or ski instructors.

The law was enacted following a series of fatal accidents in the mid noughties, the worst of which was the Saxetenbach canyoning tragedy in which 21 young people lost their lives http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Canyoning_trial_to_open_in_Interlaken.html?cid=2398350 Anxious to prevent something similar happening here the Cantonal government decided to regulate the burgeoning mountain sports guiding and instruction business. They came up with a simple system which requires that any guide or ski instructor (Valaisan, Swiss or non Swiss) acquiring clients in Valais obtains a license. This involves downloading and filling out three very simple forms and sending them together with copies of your qualifications and proof that you have liability insurance to the value of 10 million Swiss francs to the Cantonal authorities in Sion. Guides and instructors who acquire their clients outside Valais and leave Valais at the same time as their clients are not subject to the law. Before the law came into effect schools used to recruit parents to look after the kids on school skiing days, now they have to use ski instructors.

When the accident happened the group was walking along a path beside an irrigation channel (bisse) these often pass through exposed terrain and are therefore not used by the locals in winter. The rep had never followed this route before and was not carrying any of the equipment that would normally be carried when exploring a new route i.e. a rope. They eventually got to a section where the path had been swept away, presumably by snow avalanching down a gully. The rep told everybody to put their skis back on so that they could traverse across the snow, unfortunately one of the group was on a snowboard and as you can't traverse a slope on a snowboard in the way you can on skis he went on foot. The rep went first and he followed, he slipped and fell to his death. If she had taken a rope and some basic mountaineering gear as a "real" guide almost certainly would have done, she could have secured the exposed section. She could also have turned back or even called Air Glaciers and asked them to carry out a preventative rescue. They would much rather rescue somebody before they are killed or injured than afterwards.

If you believe you're going to be as safe with a SCGB leader as you would be with a fully qualified mountain guide then all I can say is, the best of British!

The new regulations won't prevent adventurous people exploring. They are probably not going to spend around 550-600fr on a Guide for the day to show them around the area, unless they have a specific goal in mind.
Driving out SCGB Reps and Tour Op leaders with regulation and insurance requirements may lead to more accidents.

I suppose the SCGB could send out their leaders on a visiting basis with the members, and they would not be affected by this.

The insurance requirement will certainly help Air-Glaciers recover the costs of rescue.

Of course they are plenty jobs for guides but what I mean is that a ski club leader status is not clear whereas a guide's status is. He's a trained professional licenced to do the job.
I understood that ski club leaders were volunteers, not associated with resort but with their ski clubs. So the law might eliminate this grey area. Plus banning leaders from leading will make people either to turn to "real" guides/ski instructors or to explore themselves.
I thought rope was only obligatory when going to the glaciated terrain, same goes for mountaineering gear. Whether the guide would have it depends on a route chosen. Still, we couldn't figure out when it happened where exactly the accident was. It sounded like around Vallon d'Arby area, returning to Tzoumaz but you say that locals do not use this route in winter so must be elsewhere. But description doesn't seem to fit anything I know. Most routes around Verbier do not allow for a turn around once you on it you have to follow through. And everyone else seems to have finished the route safely. So it's difficult to judje how bad this leader was.

A rope is essential when traveling in glaciated terrain it's also useful to have one when entering steep couloirs and anywhere the terrain looks like it might be bit dodgy. We often take one when walking along the bisses as some sections are very exposed.



The accident probably happened somewhere along the Bisse du Saxon in the vicinity of La Tzoumaz, the exact location wasn't given in the report I read. If you look on this map you will see that there a few possible places http://map.wanderland.ch/?lang=de&p&etappe=58.01 the red dots don't mark them. The photos here http://www.alpavista.ch/Alp11/2009/05/10/col-du-lein-bisse-de-saxon/ will give you some idea of the type of terrain they were traveling through, as the guy who uploaded them mentions on image 15 it's strictly forbidden to ride a mountain bike along them. As you can see it would be a barrel of laughs walking along them in alpine ski boots when they were covered in snow and ice.

2 weeks ago, we walked along the Bisse Saxon from la Tzoumaz to Isérables (the route to Nendaz) and came across this. The buildings in the distance are at the base of the Tracouet chirlift up to the Nendaz summit. This section is in the small valley that runs down from Le Fou (above Lac des Vaux) to Isérables. The Bisse originally ran across to about half way up the photo. You now have to climb up above it. This fall has been here for about 5-6 years but is now stable and there's a deviation across the top. There are still signs telling people not to stand still or stand close together!

If you were in the snow, you'd just assume that this was a treeless section. It's more precpitous than it looks and we were climbing with our hands for part of the traverse, even on a fairly clear track.

Thank you for posting this, that explains things. One of the solution for the Club would be to insist that their resort leaders if they want the position learn the area themselves and pass exam on how well they know it. Instead of what they ask for now - first aid and skiing skills. SCGB might have a case here too, though they probably had never even expected something like that and of course they have little influence/control/knowledgge of what ski passes their members buy on their ski trips or what sort of insurance (preventive rescue might well cost 10000CHF - I know people to whom it actually happened) and many trying to shed costs will go for the cheapest options from what I've read on forums. Still it's misleading to designate as "ski leader" someone who doesn't know the area. It's plainly silly to get there in 4 Valles area with so many skiing options if you have the right ski pass. Warning signs there are actually for a reason and more often than not the reason is not that you can wake up a couple of marmottes but that you can actually die. Very sad.

There is also a memorial to a young English snowboarder, Heyden Lamb, on the Bisse Saxon below Pierre Avoi (this is in your slide set). This is on the section between La Tzoumaz and Saxon - right round in the opposite direction towards Martigny. That section also has a couple of 'dodgy' bits where rockfalls run across the Bisse and the drop into the Rhone valley is severe - you definitely wouldn't survive, summer or winter.

It was a great surprise when we came across it, as we couldn't work out how he could possibly have got there, even in a whiteout. We had thought that he had traversed below Chez Simon somehow, thinking that he would hit LTZ. In fact, if you look at the piste map, the previous version was completely wrong - the left hand red down from Savoleyres down to the Chez Simon 6-man chair was marked as going over the arête (above the Bisse). On piste, it's obvious where to go but if you followed the map slavishly then you might go that way. But it didn't seem likely.

However, I can see that if you were guided that way, then you might do it. If the guide used the summer walking map, they'd perhaps think you could traverse below Chez Simon down to the Bisse and then take a spectacular walk around to La Tzoumaz. But no one who had actually walked it in the summer would consider for a second doing it in the winter, however well-equipped they were.

I know how, this is how people I know ended up paying for their rescue. They took too far to the left on the back of Savoleyres (from top of Tournelle liftand when realised started climbing back but in December it got dark very quickly, so they had to call a chopper. untracked powder at 2pm stays untracked for a good reason. Nice place to ski but you need to steer as close to saxon piste as you can. Untracked stuff to the left can be a death trap.

But there are warning signs, though not every 100m, so some may think if the move further ahead then it would be OK to go in the direction the sign they just passed warned them against.