The mysterious death of a British skier found alone on a slope in the Alps has led the French police to launch an investigation.
The dead body of the 29-year-old man, who has not been formally identified, was found alone last Sunday morning in the Meribel-Mottaret ski area.
The man was found unconscious and alone on Sunday morning, prompting efforts to revive him.
"Emergency services were alerted at 9.40am on Sunday morning, but the first team on the scene was unable to resuscitate the man," said an investigating source on Friday.
"He was alone on the slopes, but further enquiries suggested he was on holiday from England with a friend."
The sources said prosecutors in nearby Albertville had opened an investigation and that next-of-kin of the man had been contacted.
The tragedy in Meribel-Mottaret, in the Savoie region of France, is the latest in a series of fatalities involving skiers in the French alps.
In January, a 40-year-old Frenchman was charged with manslaughter after colliding with a five-year-old British girl on the slopes at Chamonix.
She was airlifted to hospital, but died from her injuries before she could be placed in intensive care.
Magistrates have said the man was skiing at ‘excessive speed’ and had ignored a warning sign referring to children at a ski school.
In the same month, French actor Gaspard Ulliel, 37, died on a piste in La Rosiere, also in Savoie.
The Hannibal Rising star, who was not wearing a safety helmet, collided with a helmeted Lithuanian man at the junction of two slopes.
The Lithuanian was unhurt.
Such deaths have shocked the ski industry, which is slowly recovering following two years of lockdowns and other restrictions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.
While off-piste avalanches are the most common cause of fatal skiing accidents, increasingly crowded slopes are also becoming more dangerous.
Eight people died in the shortened 2020/2021 season in France, with some 100,000 people injured on the slope, according to French tourism ministry figures.
Meribel-Mottaret is a village linked to Les Trois Vallées (The Three Valleys) ski region – it makes up the largest connected ski area in the world and it is hugely popular with the British.
