In all likelihood, the ski tourer was a 46-year-old local who was caught in an avalanche on the Rappenkopf in the municipality of St. Leonhard im Pitztal. The search was extremely difficult, the police said on Monday.
The reason for this is the size of the avalanche: the avalanche cone is around one kilometer long and 300 meters wide. The masses of snow accumulated up to ten meters high. In addition, the man probably did not have an avalanche search device with him, so locating the buried victim would be difficult.
On Saturday around 2:30 p.m. an avalanche broke out at an altitude of almost 2,200 meters near the Arzler Alm. Because ski tracks led into the avalanche cone, a search operation was started. In the morning, a local went on a ski tour alone and has been missing since then. Since then, numerous mountain rescue members, avalanche search dogs and helicopters have tried to comb through the snow masses. The search was interrupted twice without results.
