February 16, 2025

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Trail Runner Andrea Huser Dies After Fall in the Alps

Close to noon on Sunday, November 29, research and rescue models recovered the physique of Swiss skilled path runner Andrea Huser higher than the ski resort town of Saas-Rate, in the Swiss Alps. In accordance to a push launch issued by the neighborhood law enforcement station, Huser most likely shed her footing although striving to cross a stream on a slope beneath the Alpin Convey gondola and fell an believed 450 toes. She was 46 a long time previous.

Huser’s talents extended perfectly further than the sphere of very long-length trail functioning, a activity she only ventured into rather late in her athletic career. In 2002, she became the inaugural women’s winner in the marathon class of the European Mountain Biking Championships, a triumph she would follow with a victory in the 2004 edition of Switzerland’s prestigious Eiger Bicycle Challenge. She was a two-time winner (2011, 2012) of the Inferno Triathlon, and a member of Mammut’s ski-mountaineering pro team. It wasn’t right until she was in her mid-40s that Huser skilled what ended up arguably her greatest athletic successes. In 2017, she was the women’s winner of the Extremely Trail Entire world Tour, a title at present held by Courtney Dauwalter. In 2016 and 2017, Huser finished 2nd in the women’s race at UTMB—an achievement which, as she noted before this yr on her Facebook web page, was “a spotlight of my lifetime.” 

Immediately after that peak calendar year of 2017, Huser’s relentless racing plan commenced to capture up to her. In June of 2020, she announced that, immediately after encountering her fourth worry fracture in 3 yrs, she experienced decided to retire from aggressive running—though not from looking for experience in the mountains in the vicinity of her residence in Sigriswil, exterior the Swiss capital of Bern. 

Stephanie Situation, an ultrarunner and U.N. law firm who life in Chamonix, France, told me that she satisfied Huser a number of situations at ultras in 2017. She remembers staying struck both by how substantially Huser raced, and by how indifferent she seemed to be about the self-promotional aspect of the activity. All she needed to do was operate. Immediately after originally remaining sponsored by Dynafit and then Mammut, Huser signed a offer with Hoka in 2018. In accordance to an write-up in the Swiss newspaper Thuner Tagblatt, she also obtained some funding from Professional Sporting activities Sigriswil, her area club, granting her the fiscal leeway to race as considerably afield as Hong Kong, where she gained the Extremely-Path Tai Mo Shan in December 2017. 

By then, she had a great deal of miles in her legs. A fast lookup of the race success web-site ultrasignup.com reveals that in 2016 and 2017, Huser completed no fewer than 20 ultras on four continents. Not that she always considered that her prolific schedule was a huge offer.

As Scenario recollects: “If I expressed issue that I was racing too a lot, or that I was doing two races far too close together, Andrea would just look at me like she was genuinely puzzled. She would look at me and ask: ‘Why not? Why wouldn’t you go?’ She was just up for anything.”

Like the lots of other individuals in the ultrarunning neighborhood, Case was deeply saddened to listen to about Huser’s freak accident—one that bore a striking similarity to her very own encounter in January 2017, when she fell 140 ft all through a solo New Year’s Day snowshoe run in close proximity to Courmayeur, in Italy, just off a path she says she’s run a “billion times” in advance of. Soon after her tumble, Scenario managed to contact a helicopter and was inevitably diagnosed with 6 damaged ribs, a punctured lung, and a quality III laceration of her liver.

And she was blessed. Huser’s accident is a distressing reminder of the inherent possibility of all mountain sports—a chance that is maybe obscured by the much more flamboyantly harmful actions like Foundation jumping or serious skiing. On the day that Huser’s system was recovered, the exact same law enforcement station revealed an additional press release that a 51-12 months-outdated hiker had slipped on frozen grass in close by Zermatt and fallen to her death. 

“It in no way happened to me that I was performing a little something risky,” Case informed me about her accident. “This was snow-shoe operating. It is, like, ping pong. It’s not supposed to be a hazardous sport.” 

Of system, anyone is wiser in hindsight. Scenario informed me that one particular of the items that irked her soon after her accident was the range of persons who preferred to lecture her on how you should really hardly ever operate alone in the mountains. But solo endeavours are an inevitable element of training for an extremely. The danger is generally likely to be there. But also the reward. 

As Huser wrote in her retirement post this summer months: “Nevertheless, I will carry on to do many adventures on trails and in the mountains with skis, mountain bikes or path operating footwear. If every thing goes very well, in 3-4 months. The mountains really do not run absent from me and anticipation is the biggest joy!!!”