A 14-year-old boy has died after falling from a slope while skiing in Austria, in the second fatal incident at one of the country’s ski resorts in two days.
The child, from the Czech Republic, was on a beginner’s slope at the Feuerkogel resort on Monday morning when he suddenly veered off piste.
Local media reported that he fell some seven metres through the scree and trees before shattering his helmet on the rocks.
Bernhard Magritzer, head of the Gmunden Alpine Police, told Kronen Zeitung: “The problem is that there is currently no snow next to the slopes to cushion such a serious accident.”
The teenager, who has not been named, was found by a cable car employee who happened to be passing at the time and called the authorities.
First responders tried to resuscitate the child at the edge of the slope for an hour before he was declared dead.
Mr Magritzer said: “All available resources were called to the mountain.”
He warned that skiers should take “extreme caution” while the slopes are hard and there is no snow along the boundary.
“The slopes are extremely hard and allow for high speeds, which many then underestimate,” he added.
The teenager was part of a small group – including his father – and on a relatively flat area at the time of the accident, local media reported.
The Independent has approached the resort and Austrian police for comment.
Feuerkogel is a mountain in Upper Austria which lies 200 kilometres west of Vienna. The resort offers a mix offers year-round experiences for skiers and hikers, including family-friendly slopes.
In a study published in 2020, researchers tallied 369 fatalities on Austrian slopes between the 2008/09 and 2017/18 winter seasons, noting that the yearly number of deaths was decreasing over time.
Austria recorded less than one injury per 1,000 ski days. There was between 0.53 and 1.88 deaths per million ski days.
The authors still concluded that more prevention measures were needed to reduce risk.
The tragedy came just two days after an Austrian man, 49, died after a collision with an Irish teenager on a ski slope in the Alps.
The boy, 14, has been interviewed by Austrian police after he allegedly left the scene of the fatal collision on the Schmittenhöhe mountain in Zell am See, around 68km from Salzburg.