With its six races starting and finishing in Samoëns, the Trail du Haut Giffre is one of the great events on the “mountain trail” calendar in France. Proof of this is the success in terms of registrations which, this year, totaled 4,100 runners.
After having already had to change the courses due to the snow cover still present on the upper courses (up to 2500 meters for certain races), the organizers had to deal with extreme weather conditions after the starts of the two longest races ( the 129 and 98 km). Incessant rains and a significant drop in temperatures made progress dangerous. Worse: a trail runner died and two others were seriously injured after a fall (there are also reports of several other injuries and many cases of hypothermia).
The two races were definitively stopped by the organizers, who were faced with a lot of problems evacuating the runners, particularly during the night (helicopter takeoff impossible given the weather). “According to the Haute-Savoie prefecture, the organizers called public emergency services with the intervention of high mountain rescue and firefighters given the seriousness of the situation,” explains France 3 on its site.
The four other races, the starts of which were to be given again this weekend, were canceled. Around thirty Belgians were registered in one of the six races.
