Professional skier Jean Daniel Pession and his girlfriend Elisa Arlian are dead after falling more than 2,000 feet off northern Italy’s Mount Zerbion.
The deaths were confirmed in a Saturday, June 1 statement by the Italian Winter Sports Federation. Pession, 28, was a member of the Italian World Cup ski team who placed 15th in the 2021 World Cup finals and 22nd in the 2022 World Championship in France.
According to RAI, the country’s national public broadcasting company, the bodies of the couple were found “still tied together” after being buried in snow.
“It took hours and hours of flying over to locate them,” RAI reported. “There were no traces on the rock to suggest that they had fallen.”
The pair had left “early in the morning” to reach the summit of a peak that was familiar to both of them. However, when they failed to return, their families alerted the authorities.
Searchers were eventually able to pick up a signal from one of their cell phones, which helped them find the bodies.
“Two young lives cut short by a mountain accident, that mountain which was their passion,” Aosta Valley’s Regional Council President Alberto Bertin said, according to RAI. “In this moment of deep sadness, we express our closeness to the families, friends, and the entire Sports community, embracing them with affection and compassion.”
Renzo Tostolin, the president of Aosta Valley where Mount Zerbion is located, also released a statement saying the region was grieving “the loss of its young children.”
In January 2023, Pession posted a black-and-white photo of the couple at a friend’s wedding captioned: “Here’s to another hundred years of this ❤️.”
Arlian, 27, who was a ski instructor, routinely posted photos from her outdoor adventures via Instagram. Her most recent post in March showed off a trip to Norway that she had “dreamed of for a long time.”
After news of their tragic deaths was announced, Pession and Arlian’s social media channels were flooded with comments.
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Another wrote, “There are no words or consolation in face of these tragedies😓.”
According to U.K. outlet The Mirror, funerals for both Pession and Arlian are expected to be held on Tuesday, June 4.
