Chilean searchers on Tuesday found the bodies of two professional skiers, including a Canadian, who had been missing since an avalanche swept them away while they were hiking in the country’s south.
The Associated Press reported from Santiago that the remains of Quebec’s Jean-Phillipe Auclair and Sweden’s Carl Andreas Fransson were spotted by a helicopter around noon in bordering Argentina during a joint rescue operation by Chilean police and the armed forces.
Armada Skis, a company in California, confirmed to The Canadian Press that one of the missing hikers was the firm’s co-founder, Canadian freeskier JP Auclair, but offered no further comment pending permission from Auclair’s family.
The company’s website says Auclair had obtained Level One certification in avalanche operations through the Canadian Avalanche Association in 2009.
Authorities said the pair arrived in the Aysen region of Chile’s Patagonia on Thursday along with two other tourists from Sweden.
They had been hiking the 11,800-foot (3,600-meter) San Lorenzo mountain, and disappeared when a wall of rocks and snow cascaded down Tuesday, dragging them to a stream in Argentine territory.
The two survivors in the group were treated at a local hospital, and police said they provided information to help locate the bodies.
The regional director of Chile’s Emergency Service, Sidi Bravo, said 90 per cent of the people who go missing in the hard-to-reach area are never found.
“It was lucky to have found them and to be able to recover them,” Bravo said.
Officials said the bodies would be removed by Argentine authorities and were expected to be examined by the legal medical service in Rio Gallegos, Argentina, before being returned to their homelands.
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