Italian rescuers announced on Friday that they have recovered the bodies of three Italians who disappeared on Thursday after an avalanche along the Franco-Italian border, as well as the body of a French skier who died in the area after falling.
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The French off-piste skier, whose identity has not been given, would have jumped off a rock on Friday and then fallen into the void.
“The dynamics of the accident are being studied, but he died after his fall,” Tiziano Trevisan, spokesman for the Val d’Aosta Mountain Rescue Service, told AFP.
His body was taken to the Italian resort of Courmayeur, Mr Trevisan added.
Earlier in the day, he said the bodies of the three men, all Italians, who disappeared after an avalanche on Thursday were found on Friday morning and transported to Aosta.
The leader of this group of hikers was able to extricate himself from the avalanche and join a land caravan of Italian rescuers searching for them.
He is currently in hospital but his health is not of concern, Mr Trevisan said.
The site of the avalanche, the Pointe de la Golette at 3100 meters above sea level, is on the border between Savoy and the Aosta Valley.
An avalanche on the Armancette glacier in the Mont Blanc massif in Haute-Savoie killed six people on Sunday.