Story highlights
- A wingsuit jumper, hang glider, paraglider and two mountain climbers were killed
- The mountainous terrain in both regions is popular with adventure enthusiasts
(CNN)A string of fatal adventure sports accidents in the French Alps over the weekend has left five people dead, French officials say.
The victims included a wingsuit jumper, a hang glider, a paraglider and two mountain climbers, officials in the Hautes-Alpes and Haute-Savoie departments told CNN.
The deadly toll began Saturday, when a man fell from his hang-glider in the town of Doussard, according to a police spokesman in Haute-Savoie, a department in eastern France on the border with Switzerland and Italy.
Another person in the hang glider was unharmed, he said. The area is a popular hang-gliding destination.
Later Saturday, in Hautes-Alpes, further south on the Italian border, a man in a wingsuit died in a jump, according to Yves Hocde, the administrative head of Haute-Alpes.
Local media reported the victim was a 32-year-old man who died after diving off the Dent d'Arclusaz mountain -- the same spot where another wingsuit jumper had been killed three years earlier.
Then on Sunday, two climbers -- a 37-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman -- fell to their deaths from La Meije, a mountain in the Massif des Écrins range of the French Alps, said Hocde.
Later, a 26-year-old was killed in a paraglider crash in the town of Le Grand-Bornand, a ski resort in Haute-Savoie, according to a police spokesman.
With spectacular mountainous terrain, both French regions are popular with outdoor thrill-seekers and winter sports buffs.
Haute-Savoie was home to the first Winter Olympics, at Chamonix, in 1924.
