It wasn't long after lunch and I was scouring the peaks looking for trouble, chasing an avalanche. Suddenly, as a sliver of sun shone through the clouds, we stopped our snowmobile and my guide, a ski patroller Rene Schmid, pointed to a bunker half-hidden beneath the rocky spire of the Ballunspitze.
A roar from the engine, the crunch of the tread on the snow, and we clattered towards it on the back of the rev machine. Our quarry: a cache full of TNT and dynamite for avalanche control, the site next to a helipad from which some of the Alps' most skilled pilots and patrols take off to bomb the mountain peaks with explosives, shaking the valley below.
February 10 was International Ski Patrol Day and I learned the ins and outs of avalanche control with the resort rescue team in Galtür in Austria's legendary Paznaun Valley. There are few places where you can better appreciate the value of a patrol and when I arrived the snowflakes were heavy, hiding roads, paths and trees, and much of the city was starting to get moving for the summer holidays.
Last year, patrols in Galtür attended to more than 200 on- and off-piste accidents - a figure that is already expected to rise this year due to superior snow conditions and increased overnight stays.
The number of broken arms, shoulders and legs disrupts the patrols. The cracked helmets and concussions are even more so. On a good day there may be no paperwork, but during school holidays several serious accidents can occur in just 10 minutes. Their days are also defined by the cold fury of avalanche sounds, moments when the slopes seem to turn themselves inside out.
My home ski resort of Glencoe, Scotland, is very different. It consists of short, narrow descents and undeniable basins, but is also undermined by heather and predatory rocks, with two abrupt sides dropping away into boulder fields and rubble. I have known the Glencoe Ski Patrol volunteers for many years and when I think of their heroic exploits, I can time-stamp my own history.
The story continues
They were there when my father crashed down Scotland's steepest slope, the Flypaper, in the late 1980s. They sewed up the crown of my head when I was hit by a metal T-bar at the age of nine. They were on the front lines eleven years ago when an old friend of mine, the best skier I had ever known, was caught in a fatal avalanche. Swept away, mountain rescue teams from Glencoe and Lochaber found him buried 13 feet underground, his lungs full of snow.
And so, years later, I was here in Austria trying to find out why people like my friends, family and myself were putting ourselves in danger. No helicopters were needed on the day of my visit, but the blaring sirens of the patrol snowmobiles were a constant, ghostly presence.
"Skiing is infinitely more dangerous these days," says Rene, who is now in his 15th alpine season. "Carving edges are more aggressive, people are too fast. Beginners think they are advanced, focus on their own lines and rarely consider others around them.
"We close slopes and erect barriers, but skiers ignore the warnings. Sometimes the bigger problem is that we need to come to their rescue - and that's true us in danger."
In these high valleys, patrollers do such hard work for one reason: altruism. I asked Rene's colleague Julia Margard, a registered nurse, why she does it and her answer was less premature. As she put it, "This is a little bit of medicine for me." She told me that the sense of community might be why, after years of working at the University Hospital Innsbruck, she finally moved to the mountains. In this era of climate change, she said, snowpack is also more unpredictable. "We always need better risk awareness."
Galtür is a ski village that hides its trauma well. Twenty-five years ago, on February 23, 1999, the vicious Sonnenberg avalanche ripped through the village, smothering the valley in 330,000 tons of powder snow and resulting in the greatest loss of life in modern Alpine history.
Buildings were torpedoed, cars tossed and 57 people buried, 31 of whom died. Steep terrain, a cold polar front, days of heavy snow, swirling northwest winds, freeze-thaw conditions and a weak base layer compounded the devastation. Galtür found himself under a time bomb. Later, scientists at the Snow and Avalanche Research Institute in Davos, Switzerland, declared it the most treacherous winter in 75 years.
The next morning the color faded from the sky, leaving the valley in a blanket of mist, and I decided to visit the Alpinarium, a museum built as a memorial to the victims, but also to offer visitors a glimpse into the world of Alpine weather systems and predictions. From the outside it is also unmistakably recognizable as a colossal avalanche barrier, a 234-meter-high superstructure built at the foot of the Grieskogel and Grieskopf to protect the village from future unrest.
Both Rene Schmid and Andrea Hajdina, who now works at the Alpinarium, experienced the ordeal in 1999. They both still remember the panic among friends and family in the Paznaun Valley. For Rene it was "a bizarre accident, never to be forgotten". Meanwhile, Andrea remembered the night her mother almost never came home. "My uncle was part of the rescue team," she told me. "He dug out one of the bodies."
The list of those killed 25 years ago included residents, visitors and entire families, from Austria and beyond. The youngest to die was Fabian Simon Vogl, who died at the age of five, along with his older sister Hannah Julia, aged nine. Their names are now written in handwritten chalk on the wall next to an abstract triptych dedicated to memory, but also to hope.
Any visitor would be right to think that the dangers cannot be removed from the mountains, but fortunately the beauty of Galtür prevails. On my last morning I ascended again towards the Ballunspitze, this time under a blaze of sunlight. Before me lay a wave of snow-capped spires. Galtür's great opponent was all around us: nature.
It occurred to me that in this age of unpredictable weather, there is something comforting about knowing there is someone watching, identifying risks and allaying fears. As I watched the white folds of the mountains crinkle, I also thought about what could happen in possible future moments and I decided to visit the Piste Rescue Team again to thank you. Their passion and dignity should be celebrated, not just once in February, but every time the mountains call.
Essentials
Mike was a guest at Galtür and Hotel Zontaja. Rooms from €77 per person per night. A six-day Silvretta pass for adults costs £332. Equipment hire is available from £7 per day via intersportrent.com. More information can be found at galtuer.com.
