Climbing
A woman has died after she plunged into a deep crevasse on a Swiss glacier on Thursday during a trek to the Strahlhorn mountain. The 58-year-old Brit walked straight into a crevasse along the Allalin Glacier located in the Pennine Alps near the Allalinhorn in the canton of Valais at around 4.30am.
Swiss officials said the woman stepped onto a snow bridge, a thin covering of ice and snow over a crevasse, before falling through the crack into the Allalin Glacier below. She had been connected to a second person by a rope during the trek.
The pair had reportedly set off at 3 am from the Britannia Hut, which was founded by British climbers at the turn-of-the-last-century, and remains popular with Brits to this day. They had been ascending for 90 minutes when the woman fell.
It is unclear what happened to the second person but it appears only the woman fell into the glacier despite the fact they were roped together. Swiss prosecutors are now investigating the circumstances surrounding her death.
The glacier is 3.7-miles long and the largest glacier supplying the Saaser Vispa river which lies along the Swiss Alps, 9,744-feet above sea level.
