A man has died and his wife is critically injured after they plunged 250ft off a cliff when they took a wrong turn while riding a toboggan in the Austrian Alps.
The couple were sledding down the Rabantalm mountain in East Tyrol on New Year’s Day alongside their daughter and her partner when they suddenly veered off the edge of the vertical slope after turning a corner.
The husband, a 63-year-old Austrian man, died instantly while his wife, 58, suffered severe injuries.
Sledders climbing up the mountain called emergency services after noticing the fresh toboggan run extending beyond the edge of the slope and hearing screams from below.
The wife was first airlifted to the Lienz District Hospital but was later transferred to the Klagenfurt Regional Hospital due to the severity of her injuries, while her husband’s body was recovered by the Lienz Mountain Rescue team.
The couple’s relatives were cared for by a crisis intervention team at the site of the accident.
The tragedy is the latest to hit the Alpine region after a 24-year-old British skier died last month after he fell 900ft down a steep off-piste slope in the French Alps.
The unnamed Brit is understood to have been among a group of skiers who went off-piste in Les Arcs 2000 in the French ski resort of Savoie.
Two members of the group tried to ski down a steep slope but one of them lost his footing and careered out of control down the slope before he crashed over a rocky ridge.
Other skiers raised the alarm and two ski patrollers rushed to his aid where he was found unconscious, having suffered a cardiac arrest.
An air ambulance was sent from Courchevel and reached the victim about half an hour after the initial alert.
A doctor and two police rescue workers sought to revive the man but tragically he was declared dead.
The resort said ‘its most sincere thoughts to the family and the friends of the victim’.
The second skier was found trapped at the top of the slope unable to move.
He was later rescued by a police helicopter.
According to The Times, the deadly slope was wide at the top but narrowed towards the bottom before ending on the ridge, which was covered in a small quantity of hard snow, increasing the risk of accidents.
Resort managers have urged skiers to avoid steep off-piste slopes when the snow is hard.
