NNA – Helicopters were combing an area near the Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland on Monday with hope fading of finding a missing skier after five other members of the party were found dead after freezing to death in quot;catastrophicquot; conditions.
The cross-country skiers, five of them members of the same family from Valais canton, went missing near the 3,710 metre-high Tecirc;te Blanche mountain on Saturday on the Zermatt-Arolla path.
Authorities have not given the cause of death for the five found late on Sunday but described quot;catastrophicquot; conditions with snow storms, high winds and extreme temperatures.
quot;Our priority is to find that sixth person,quot; Christian Varone, cantonal police chief, told journalists.
quot;As long as there is hope we will do all we can, but we have to be realistic about the conditions that person has lived through over the past 48 hours.quot;
Mountain guide Anjan Truffer told Swiss broadcaster SRF that two of the bodies had to be dug out from beneath the snow.
quot;The end result was clear, the people froze to death. They got caught in a storm, probably lost their bearings and didn#39;t know what to do.quot; He said that rescuers advised them to dig a snow cave after one of them sounded the alarm.
quot;You could see that they tried, but unfortunately they were very poorly equipped and with those little shovels in the hard snow, there wasn#39;t much they could do.quot;–Reutersnbsp;
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