An Irish climber was killed in a fall on the slopes of Mont Blanc in south-eastern France yesterday morning, the French Gendarmerie's High Mountain Squad confirmed last night. The Irishman, aged 29, was tied by a rope to a French companion, who was seriously injured. The French authorities were withholding his name until his family had been notified.
The pair were unfastening a rope when they fell 400 metres from the 4,300-metre Mont Maudit slope in the Mont Blanc range. Maudit means "cursed" in French. "They were tied together, one walking in front of the other", the gendarme said. "One of them slipped and dragged the other down with him. The Irishman hit a slab of very hard ice at the bottom, which killed him."
Other climbers witnessed the fall and notified the rescue squad. The Irish climber was dead when the rescuers arrived.
The name "cursed" went back hundreds of years, the gendarme said, "to a time when people were frightened of mountains." It did not refer to present-day dangers.
The gendarmes did not know how much mountain experience the two men had. About 30 climbers, more than half of them foreigners, have perished in the French Alps in the past two weeks. In another accident, at Courcheval, about 100 kilometres away, a 15-year-old French boy was also killed yesterday. Three more climbers were missing last night.
These casualty figures are not unusually high, but they have been concentrated in a much shorter period this year. "There was heavy snow at the beginning of July", the gendarme said. "There is a lot of it melting in the heat high on the mountains. People go climbing despite it being a high-risk period."
Summer is the busiest season for climbers in the French Alps. "Mont Blanc is the highest peak in Europe", the gendarme said. "That's why so many people come here."
