Search for missing Germans on Mont Blanc stopped
Early Monday morning, chunks of glacial ice break off at Mont Blanc and plummet into the depths. A Frenchman is killed by the snow, and two Germans have been missing since. Authorities have now called off the search for the two mountaineers.
The search for two German mountaineers in the Mont Blanc massif has been called off. They had been missing since a glacial ice collapse on Monday morning. "There is no longer a search," said a spokesperson for the public prosecutor's office in the eastern French department of Haute-Savoie. "Unfortunately, it no longer makes sense." The two Germans are believed to have been swept into a crevasse filled with up to ten meters of snow.
Initial findings suggest that the Germans were caught in a serac, a tower of glacial ice, which collapsed around 3:00 AM on Monday at approximately 4100 meters on the north side of Mont Blanc du Tacul. A Frenchman was killed, and four others were injured.
"I had just passed by. It was dark, we only heard the noise. A bang and then the descent of snow towards the valley," said eyewitness Paolo Comune, director of the alpine rescue service in the Italian Aosta Valley, to the newspaper "La Repubblica". He had been in the area for training purposes when the glacial ice collapsed.
The Germans, aged 30 and 39, have been missing since. They had spent the night before Monday in a hut at the foot of the Mont Blanc massif. A ice axe was found at the edge of a crevasse during the search for the Germans. It is believed that they were caught off guard by the ice avalanche and swept into the crevasse.
Initial information suggests that the serac collapse had a natural cause. There was said to have been a snowstorm on the mountain during the night. Mont Blanc, which lies on the border between France and Italy, is highly exposed to weather conditions due to its height of over 4800 meters, and severe accidents occur regularly.
The search for the two German mountaineers unfortunately had to be called off due to the lack of prospects. It's unfortunate that their fate remains unknown after the glacial ice collapse.
