Lucky Spaniard cheats death on the Vallée Blanche

Skiers on the Vallee Blanche
Uploaded by Chamonix Experience

At 11.30am last Thursday morning, a 38 year-old Spaniard, Fernando Gaspar Estevez Carvadjal , was knee-deep in powder on the Vallée Blanche when he skied straight into a crevasse at 3,500m, near the Italian border. From then on, his fate was somewhere between the hands of Mother Nature and Lady Luck. The latter got an early head start as the skier re-emerged onto the world-famous off-piste run after an exhausting three hour climb, but by then the rest of the skiing fraternity were nowhere to be seen and a two-day snowstorm had settled on the Mont Blanc.

Enterprising Fernando was not about to let this turn of events get the better of him, and dug a snow-cave which was home for the following 48 hours. Staying calm, awake and moving his extremities continually, he was able to avoid the ill-effects of the cold. He was eventually spotted by a group of Italian skiers when the weather cleared. Speaking to the local press from his hospital bed in Chamonix, suffering from only mild exposure, he is keen to point out that separating yourself from a group is not a particularly cunning plan, especially in such an unforgiving environment. That said, the mountains have been uncharacteristically forgiving this weekend - a snowboarder in a similar pickle to our Fernando has survived 24 hours outside in the snowstorm blowing over Les Deux Alpes, in Isère.