Today (February 10, 2025) is International Ski Patrol Day, when we all celebrate the work of our slope safety heroes. Ahead of the big day, Seb Ramsay spent a day with the Les Grands Montets ski patrol in the Chamonix Valley. As well as finding out how the team worked, he caught a glimpse of the real-life pressures behind the glamour of the uniform.
A shadow flicks across Laurent Langoisseur’s face as talk turns to the infamous Montroc avalanche of February 9,1999.
Twelve people died when a 300,000 cubic metre avalanche spilled into the tiny Chamonix Valley hamlet at 60mph, smashing buildings and wreaking devastation.
Assistant chef of Les Grand Montets ski patrol Laurent, 58, wears the responsibility of his post with an easy humour but the loss of a colleague that day is a memory that weighs heavily.
“I think we all remember that day. People my age certainly do,” he says, “We lost a friend. One of the casualties – Daniel – used to be a ski patroller.”
(The team identify and mark hazards on Grands Montets cliff, rock and gully-peppered 28km of piste. Pic credit Olly Bowman)
Later that year, the mayor of Chamonix was sentenced to three months in prison for ‘homicide and involuntary injuries’ for not having evacuated the chalets in the avalanche’s path.
The importance and responsibility of the ski patrol is such that tragedy and loss are very much the everyday.
Just four days after I spent a day with the ski patrol at Les Grands Montets, an avalanche killed a man skiing off-piste in a closed area. I was a guest of Norwegian clothing company Helly Hansen who provide the team’s kit.
(Casualties are immobilised with an inflatable body cast that allows them to be transported by sled. Pic credit Olly Bowman)
Les Grands Montets is particularly famous for its off-piste runs but, while keeping tabs on these, the ski patrollers stress that their focus must be the pistes themselves and it’s these runs that they work to make safe.
Former Alpine soldier Laurent explains that it’s seldom not busy. Across the Chamonix valley, the various ski patrols deal with around 1,000 accidents a year and some 380 in Les Grands Montets alone. The resort above Argentière is Chamonix’s largest and most popular ski area.
The day began for us at around 7am getting on the telecabine lift to Plan Joran some 750m above Argentière. It’s been snowing quite heavily for a few hours but there’s little wind which is key to the safety of the slopes.
Laurent, who has done 30 years as a patroller, takes us to the weather station close to the ski patrol cabin at Lognan and explains his first job. Firstly he measures the depth, temperature and humidity of the new snow that’s fallen in the last 24h. At around 8am there’s been 15cm of fresh snow and 142cm in the total snow pack. The snow is at 0C – warm – and the humidity is 97%. He also takes the maximum and minimum temperatures during the last day. He shares these figures with the whole team and the lift workers via his radio and then they are used to inform the day’s briefing.
Laurent uses an app to connect to a sensor that measures current temperature plus maximum and minimum over the preceding 24 hours. Pic Olly Bowman.
Ski patrol chef de piste Christophe Boloyan conducts the briefing, addressing the 10-strong team in the cabin. The patrollers will work in pairs with two permanently based at the highest point of the piste network so that they can respond quickly to any reports of an accident. The rest will spend the next hour or two making sure that the pistes are safe to be opened and the lifts won’t start until the team are 100% satisfied.
Christophe talks with the team about the areas where new snowfall threatens to avalanche on to the piste below. In the spots that are easily accessed, the teams will use their skis to initiate the slide by cutting the slab simply by skiing across. In the harder to reach areas there is a network of pipes called Gaz-Ex which are positioned to direct a gas explosion to set off an avalanche. The distinctive blasts can be heard throughout ski resorts early in the morning following a dump of snow. There are also areas where overhead pulleys are used with explosives. Patrollers use timed fuses to make sure the charges ignite in the right spot.
On this occasion, almost no wind has accompanied the snow fall so the potential issues are vastly reduced. Christophe says that wind-loaded faces create the most hazardous conditions and require the most preparatory work before the resort can be opened.
(The absence of wind during the day’s snowfall means the risk of avalanche is substantially reduced. Pic Olly Bowman)
Laurent, who was born in Normandy in the north-west of France, explains that once a loaded, avalanche-prone slab of snow has slid, it almost always proves no further threat.
He says that they can easily delay the opening of the lift and, on occasion, it will be as late as noon before they are happy to allow skiers on to the hill.
“We try to do everything possible. We know the places over time where there can be problems and we try to do as much as we can,” he says.
The Gaz-Ex system is totally remotely controlled by computer. The big pipes – often seen on ridges and couloirs – mix and ignite gases, directing the resulting blast on to snow-loaded slopes above the pisted area.
(The final sweep rewards the team with memorable views – pic Seb Ramsay)
There are 13 at Les Grands Montets and some members of the ski patrol team will work through the summer season to maintain and extend the system.
Laurent, whose wife and daughter both work in Chamonix, says they also use a helicopter-mounted system to give them the flexibility to trigger avalanches in tricky spots.
“When you can’t go on skis because it’s too dangerous you can drop a charge from a helicopter and we have another system – it’s called Daisy Bell – it’s like a V-shape and carries some kind of gas tanks and we can move it to where we want it on the mountain. Everything else is set in the mountain and you can’t move it.”
Once the lifts and ski pistes are open, the more day-to-day tasks of the ski patrol include making sure the fencing protecting skiers from danger areas and piste marker posts are in place.
(Assistant chef de piste Laurent Langoisseur measures the depth of snowpack. Image credit Olly Bowman)
Laurent, who works as a hiking guide in the summer, says: “All the ski patrol will put their equipment away and then they will go up to any cable cars and chair lifts and start to go on different runs and see if there’s any trouble like an avalanche that’s cut across the ski runs and then you can’t ski anymore. Or the fences were taken down by the wind. It could be anything but that’s how the day is spent – patrolling, doing rescues and fixing problems with one team staying at the top all the time.”
At the end of the day the team will sweep the mountain while keeping the first-responding team of two at the top.
“We go back to the top altogether and keep one team for the emergencies and we split the groups so one ski patrol will go on that ski run and we go everywhere to make sure there’s no one left. If they are lost or any kind of trouble or injured on the ski run hopefully sometimes we will try to watch off-piste but mostly we do the ski run.
“If we have enough ski patrol and we have one guy free then we might send him through an area of off piste that we know has been busy but mostly – because that’s the rules, we want to clear the ski runs that we open to the public.”
Helly Hansen is donating 5% of e-commerce sales and select retail store sales from February 10th to various organisations that support ski patrol internationally, including Fédération Internationale des Patrouilles de Ski (FIPS), Canadian Ski Patrol and The Northwest Avalanche Center (NWAC).
In addition, anyone who purchase new Helly ski gear receive an additional day on the slopes thanks to its annual Ski Free programme. The offer is available at 50 top resorts in Europe and North America including Chamonix, Swiss freeride paradise Verbier and Scotland’s Glenshee.
Pictures above and top credit Seb Ramsay, pictured below skiing through the Magic Forest off-piste area of Les Grands Montets (pic credit: Olly Bowman).
