An avalanche killed five Czech mountaineers in the central Austrian Dachstein region on Sunday, police said.
The three women, aged 27, 30 and 37, and two men, aged 28 and 46, were walking in snow shoes towards their intended climb when the avalanche buried them under a metre (three feet) of snow.
Witnesses tried to help the climbers and alerted the authorities, but efforts to resuscitate the victims failed.
The climbers were not wearing avalanche location beacons, Upper Austria provincial police said.
