TROMSØ (iTromsø / VG) It was the three Frenchmen Patrick Cariat, Roger Pourtau and André Vignot who lost their lives in the landslide accident in Lyngen, according to iTromsø.
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On Thursday afternoon, the emergency services moved out to the popular hiking area Beretlia in Lyngen in Troms, after avalanche reports. The tour group that was affected consisted of a total of nine Frenchmen. Six in the tour came unscathed from the incident, while three men in their 60s died.
On Sunday, iTromsø writes that it was the Frenchmen Patrick Cariat, Roger Pourtau and André Vignot who lost their lives in the landslide accident. All three were experienced hikers.
It was Northern Lights who mentioned the case first.
The tour group had dug out the three victims and tried to save their lives, before the emergency services arrived at the scene. Two of the six survivors lost their spouses.
Experienced skiers
The French were members of the alpine club Club Alpin Français de Pau, which has shared its condolences after the death in a message on Facebook:
“It’s better to lose yourself in your passion than to lose your passion. It is with great sadness that we learn about three members of the French alpine club, including Roger Pourtau and André Vignot from CAF de Pau, who were swept away by an avalanche during a ski ride in Norway. They were very involved in the club and appreciated by everyone, their death is a real shock “, writes the club.
The club’s vice president, Rémy Giersch, describes them as experienced mentors who had overseen hundreds of club trips.
– They put safety at the center of their concerns. I am sure that the precautions they took on this trip prevented more injuries, Giersch writes to VG.
The leader of the club, Michel Nagoro, has been interviewed by the French newspaper The Rep of the Pyrenees:
– I can not even imagine what it must be like to pick up three friends in the snow, he says to the newspaper.
According to the mayor of the city Oloron Bernard Uthurry, all three dead were experienced skiers.
– They were extremely experienced and committed skiers. André Vignot was even a national authority on mountain safety, he told the French TV channel France3.
– He trained a lot of people. It is an eminently recognized mountain personality that disappears, he continues.
– Here we are talking about experienced skiers who are out in nice weather and beautiful surroundings. There have never been landslides in this area. Here are people who saw their spouses disappear. Now they need peace, said municipal chief physician Hans-Olav Holtermann Eriksen VG the same day as the death avalanche passed.
Worked with avalanche warning
According to La Rép des Pyrénées, André Vignot was the head of a precision mechanics company and is described as an adventurer who trained in South America and crossed Greenland.
Cariat was an engineer and had recently retired, while Pourtau was retired from Météo-France, France’s answer to the Meteorological Institute. Here he works, among other things, with avalanche warning, the newspaper writes.
In the last 20 years, 112 people have lost their lives in landslide accidents in Norway. 45 of these died in the mountains in Troms, writes NRK.
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