A passenger train derailed near the village of Goppenstein in Switzerland's Valais canton early Monday morning after an avalanche swept across the railway — the latest in a series of deadly snowslides that have killed at least five people across the Alps in the span of four days.
Valais cantonal police posted a brief alert around 7 a.m. local time:
Train derailment, likely with injuries, response underway, more information to follow.
Around 30 passengers were evacuated from the train, with five confirmed injured. One was transported to the hospital in Sion. The train, a RegioExpress traveling from Spiez to Brig, had derailed as it exited the Lötschberg Tunnel on the Goppenstein-Hohtenn section — a critical north-south corridor through the Swiss Alps.
The Swiss Federal Railways suspended service on the Frutigen-Brig line between Goppenstein and Brig. Police advised journalists to leave the scene due to the continuing avalanche risk. Heavy snow continued to fall on the village, which sits at roughly 4,000 feet.
This wasn't the first avalanche to hit Goppenstein in recent days. A previous slide earlier in the week — described by the Federal Roads Office as an "extreme event" — temporarily cut the Lötschental valley off from the outside world and shut down a car shuttle train for several hours. That one caused no injuries. Monday's did.
The region was already under a level-four avalanche warning — the second-highest on the five-point scale. The U.S. Sun reported. Days of persistent snowfall had piled fresh loads onto weak underlying layers, producing exactly the kind of instability that makes alpine travel a calculated gamble even under the best management.
Swiss rail is one of the most reliable and heavily used networks in Europe. The Swiss travel more rail kilometers per person than anyone else on the continent. Accidents have declined in recent decades even as ridership has grown. Monday's derailment is a reminder that no infrastructure, however well-engineered, can fully overrule the mountains.
Two days before the Swiss train came off the tracks, an avalanche at the Val d'Isère ski resort in the French Alps killed three skiers — two British nationals and one French — on Friday, February 13.
The slide struck around 11:30 a.m. in the Manchet valley sector, between the Solaise and Bellevarde massifs, at roughly 2,200 meters. All six people caught in the avalanche were skiing off-piste. The avalanche risk at the time stood at level four out of five.
The two British victims were part of a group of five accompanied by a professional instructor. They were positioned lower on the slope and did not see the avalanche approaching. A third British member of the group suffered minor injuries. The instructor was unhurt. The French victim had been skiing alone in the same sector.
All were equipped with avalanche transceivers, shovels, and probes — the standard safety kit for off-piste travel. Ski patrollers extracted the first person in under five minutes. It wasn't enough.
Albertville public prosecutor Benoît Bachelet opened a judicial inquiry into involuntary manslaughter, carried out by the CRS des Alpes mountain rescue service. Alcohol and drug tests on the instructor came back negative.
Cédric Bonnevie, Val d'Isère's piste director, said an inquiry into the incident was underway. The resort offered condolences to the victims' families and urged skiers to stay within marked, secure areas.
Friday's tragedy came just one day after parts of the French Alps were placed under Level 5 — the maximum avalanche danger rating, described by experts as an "exceptional" situation. Several major resorts, including La Plagne, Les Arcs, and Peisey-Vallandry, had shut down entirely.
By Friday, the rating had dropped to Level 4. But a snowpack that was catastrophically unstable one day does not become safe the next. The conditions that produce a Level 5 alert don't evaporate overnight. They linger. Layers remain weak. Slopes remain loaded. The number changes; the mountain doesn't.
The deaths brought France's avalanche toll for the winter season to 25, most of them since January.
On Sunday, February 15, an avalanche struck the Couloir Vesses — a well-known freeride route in Val Veny above Courmayeur, on the Italian side of Mont Blanc. Three off-piste skiers were caught. Two died. The third, critically injured, was transferred from Aosta to a hospital in Turin.
The victims are reported to be French nationals. One died at the scene. The second died after being transported to a nearby emergency room.
Rescue operations involved approximately 15 Alpine Rescue personnel, Guardia di Finanza teams, three canine units, and two helicopters. The Guardia di Finanza is conducting the investigation. The avalanche bulletin for Val Veny had warned of a danger level of four out of five.
Five dead across three countries in four days. All off-piste or in exposed terrain. All during elevated avalanche warnings. All equipped, experienced, or professionally guided. None of that was sufficient.
There's a temptation, in the aftermath of events like these, to reach for systemic explanations — climate shifts, underfunded forecasting, resort liability. Some of that may be worth examining in time. But the simplest explanation is also the most honest: mountains are dangerous, and danger ratings exist because the risk is real, not theoretical. A Level 4 warning means the snowpack is trying to kill you. Equipment and expertise reduce the odds. They don't eliminate them.
Italy's Alpine Rescue reported that 13 backcountry skiers, climbers, and hikers died in the Italian mountains in a single week ending February 8 — a record toll — with ten of those deaths caused by avalanches. The broader Alpine arc, stretching from France through Switzerland to Austria, has been under persistent strain from an unusually unstable snowpack all season.
Personal responsibility remains the bedrock of backcountry recreation. Every skier who drops into off-piste terrain makes a choice. That choice deserves respect — not recklessness, not naïveté, but the honest acknowledgment that the mountain doesn't read the forecast. It doesn't care about your transceiver. And it doesn't wait for anyone to be ready.
The Alps are still open. The snow is still falling. And the warnings are still posted.
