Skiing in Europe is a bit different from skiing in North America. In North America, avalanche danger is mitigated across in-bound terrain on resorts. When you’re skiing in-bounds, you can usually assume ski patrollers have already worked to confirm that the area is safe for skiers and snowboarder, both in terms of conditions and in terms of avalanches.
When you’re skiing in Europe, the idea of in-bound versus out-of-bound skiing doens’t exist in the same way. There’s on-piste and off-piste terrain, and while some mitigation work might be done off-piste, most of the focus is on keeping the on-piste terrain safe.
This means Europe is truly incredible when it comes to backcountry access, but it also means that there’s a lot of terrain that can be accessed by lift that shouldn’t necessarily be thought of as controlled or mitigated. That’s why guides are so highly recommended when going off-piste.
This skier captured a pretty large avalanche that occurred off-piste from the Boismint lift in France’s Val Thorens, including a search of the debris field to make sure there was nobody buried when the slide came to a stop.
“Avalanche followed by search in the off-piste from Boismint chair lift.”