Woman falls to her death at ski resort

A British female snowboarder died in Switzerland yesterday after falling into a crevasse near the ski resort of Zermatt.

The woman, 33, who has not been named, was snowboarding with seven other people towards a glacier when she plunged 15m (50ft) at 10am local time.

Her fellow snowboarders contacted the emergency services, who dispatched two helicopters, four mountain rescuers and a doctor to the scene. "Sadly by the time they reached her, the lady was dead,"Renato Kalbermartten, a police spokesman, said.

The group was snowboarding on a high altitude glacier which straddles the Swiss-Italian border near Zermatt. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said yesterday that it was investigating the incident.

On Sunday two British cross-country skiers froze to death in a Norwegian national park after getting caught in a severe storm.

Jim Ross, 50, and Peter Wilson, 18, died of suspected hypothermia in the Hardangervidda region of western Norway. Mr Wilson's father, Rupert, 48, survived after being found by a Red Cross mountain rescue team.

In January, a series of avalanches across the Alps claimed the lives of at least eight people.