(Lyon) The search has ended for two German climbers who disappeared during the night from Sunday to Monday in the Mont Blanc massif after a serac fall which killed a Frenchman and injured four, French justice said on Thursday.
“There is no more searching. Unfortunately it is no longer of any use: in all likelihood they were thrown into the crevasse and there is 10m of snow on top,” Jean Ailhaud, deputy prosecutor of Bonneville, in the French Alps, told AFP.
“It would be suicidal to go down there, it is the glacier that will give up the bodies,” he continued, explaining that the two men had probably died “either in the fall, or asphyxiation, or of hypothermia.”
“The family has been notified,” he said.
The two Germans, aged 30 and 39, had spent the night at the Cosmiques refuge, located at the foot of Mont Blanc du Tacul, where the accident occurred, according to the high mountain gendarmerie platoon of the town of Chamonix.
The fall of the serac, an enormous block of ice detached from a glacier, occurred around 3 a.m. on the north face of Tacul, at an altitude of around 4,100 metres, while around fifteen people were engaged in the ascent of Mont Blanc.
As soon as the alert was raised, major rescue operations were mobilised with helicopters, two dog teams and rescuers. When they arrived, they discovered a 57-year-old Frenchman dead.
A 42-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman were seriously injured and a 58-year-old Spaniard and his 17-year-old son suffered fractures.
Eleven other people, who were also on the track at the time of the serac’s fall, escaped unharmed.