British skier dies in French Alps while skiing off-piste

A British skier has died in the French Alps after he and two friends plunged hundreds of feet from a ridge while skiing off piste.

In a separate incident, a 13-year-old boy died when both he and his brother fell off a cliff after they got lost while skiing with their family.

The Briton, who has not been named, was with two friends in the resort of Oz-en-Oisans on Saturday when they decided to leave the marked slopes. Police said that all three men were in their 20s and were experienced skiers.

“They were following ski tracks but they got lost when the tracks came to an end,” a spokesman for the gendarme mountain rescue unit, based in nearby Grenoble, told the Telegraph.

“They saw a marked slope in the distance and were trying to get to that. But the area they had to go through was very unstable, made up of ridges and a mixture of snow and rocks,” he said.

All three ended up falling, but not at the same time. The man who died fell somewhere between 100 and 200 metres, said the officer.

“It looks like he died instantly. His body rolled down the ridge, bashing off rocks several times before it came to a halt,” said the spokesman.

One of two other skiiers emerged unscathed from his fall, while the other suffered minor injuries. They were later taken to safety by a gendarme mountain rescue team.

Police did not give the men’s names.

In a separate incident, a 13-year-old French boy was found dead at the foot of a cliff after both he and his brother - who survived - fell from the precipice the night before after getting lost while skiing with their family in Avoriaz.

The boys had wandered off piste on Saturday and, as night fell, ended up in a forest whose trees concealed the 490-foot cliff which they fell off.

The younger brother, aged 10, spent the night in sub-zero temperatures beside his dead brother at the foot of the cliff.

Rescuers eventually found the boys at dawn on Sunday. The younger brother was said to be be injured but in a stable condition.

Earlier this week, a young British skier was killed after smashing into a tree at Les Diablerets, a Swiss ski resort, on the edge of a piste while on holiday with his family.