Climbing
All hope has been crushed as the four missing hikers on Mont Blanc, France, have been found dead. Two Italian and two Korean hikers had been missing on Mont Blanc since Saturday. On Tuesday, September 10, in the early afternoon, their bodies were found by French mountain police. The hikers presumably died from exposure and/or exhaustion. The Italian hikers, identified as Sara Stefanelli (41) and Andrea Galimberti (53), were found in the Mur de la Cote area, a steep frozen slope that leads to the summit of Mont Blanc on the French side. The lifeless bodies of the two Korean hikers were found earlier, just below the Italian hikers, at an altitude of around 4,500 meters (14,764 feet).
The frantic search for the four hikers missing since Saturday had been hampered for several days by bad weather, leaving helicopters unable to fly due to poor visibility. Several helicopter rescue attempts were made, including on Tuesday morning, but each time had to turn around. The Italian Search and Rescue Team from the Valle d’Aosta reached the peak on Tuesday morning on foot but failed to spot the missing hikers. A helicopter search by the French Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne (PGHM) de Chamonix Mont-Blanc in the early afternoon, when visibility cleared, located the four missing hikers. Unfortunately, all help came too late for the two pairs.
The Italian climbers were said to be very experienced hikers who had summited the Matterhorn just six days before this tragedy occurred. Galimberti was known as an expert climber, while Stefanelli was new to mountaineering but had completed a mountaineering course just three months ago. Not much is known about the Korean climbers but the French newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré identified them as a man and a woman in their 40s and 50s. Another Korean climbing group had been successfully recovered on Saturday afternoon from an altitude of around 4,100 meters (13,451 feet), so there was hope that the other Korean pair could also be found, but, unfortunately, their exact location was unknown.
Conditions at Mont Blanc have been treacherous the last few days, with temperatures of up to -15°C (5°F), winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour (93 mph), and almost half a meter (20 inches) of fresh snow. The snow also buried the hikers’ tracks, hampering search and rescue efforts further, and increasing the risk of avalanches. While hopes of finding the hikers were dwindling, family members had prayed for a miracle, trusting Galimberti’s experience and equipment. Unfortunately, those hopes were crushed on Tuesday afternoon. The tragic outcome highlights the dangers of high-altitude mountaineering and just how quickly the weather can become dangerous and even overcome the most experienced climbers.
