Russian authorities on Monday reimposed an avalanche warning for the mountain resort used to host the Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games events, after an avalanche killed two women in the area at the weekend.
Russia's Vic Wild (eight) and Slovenia's Zan Kosir compete in the Men's Snowboard Parallel Slalom Final at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park on February 22, 2014 during the Sochi Winter Olympics
The avalanche hit the Rosa Khutor complex used for the Olympic and Paralympic Alpine events, killing a teenage girl and a woman, at around noon on Sunday, regional investigators said Monday.
The avalanche "hit a group of six skiers and pushed them off the piste. They were not injured but a 16-year-old girl and a 45-year-old woman standing at the bottom of the slope were covered with snow and died", the Kuban regional investigators said in a statement.
The women who died were believed to be members of a group of skiers from the Krasnodar region, the investigators said.
The accident came just a week after the closing of the Paralympic Games, which used the winter sports complex after the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in February.
The Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre is a resort capable of hosting 10,000 people a day and is key to Russia's plan to make the hugely costly Olympic infrastructure commercially viable after the events.
Investigators went to inspect the 3.2-kilometre-long (two-mile) "Labyrinth" piste where the accident occurred and said they would carry out an initial check before launching any criminal proceedings.
The accident took place two days after an avalanche warning had been lifted on Friday.
The resort said in a statement on Monday that the slopes had been inspected overnight before the accident and some of the slopes had been closed for safety reasons, including the Krazy Khutor black slope which crosses the Labyrinth.
"The resort carried out all the necessary anti-avalanche procedures overnight from Saturday to Sunday," it said.
Three avalanche-release systems were activated "precisely at the spot where the avalanche fell," it said.
The resort said it believed the avalanche could have been caused by skiers or snowboarders moving above the the ski slope outside the permitted zone.
The resort on Monday afternoon listed 24 out of its 36 pistes as closed, including the Labyrinth.
The southern Krasnodar region's emergency ministry on Monday announced a fresh avalanche warning lasting until Thursday for the mountain area above a height of 1,300 metres (4,265 feet).