Bad weather and avalanches continue to take a devastating toll on the climbing world this year. Officials have announced that they 聽who died Tuesday in the Alps near Mont Blanc*.
Five climbers and a guide had been climbing the Aiguille d’Argenti猫re Tuesday evening when bad weather struck. They had been completing a two-week mountaineering course. Officials were notified when the climbers did not arrive at a mountain refuge. On Wednesday morning, a rescue helicopter found the bodies of the five climbers; later that morning, , their guide’s body was also found.
This adds up to 14 deaths around Mont Blanc in less than a month. Between July 15 and August 2, eight other climbers perished on the French mountain, Europe’s highest. Many guides and local officials feel some climbers have become too reckless. “Mont Blanc is not the New York Marathon,” Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of St-Gervais-les-Bains, told a French radio station in July. “It’s not a trek. It’s mountaineering.” (It should be noted that this statement does not apply in any way to the climbers who died on Tuesday, as they were with a well-known French climbing organization.)
Closer to home, the National Park Service has announced that聽聽last week.聽The remains have not yet been removed from the mountain, as a foot search is still not safe, but the individuals, whose sexes and ages have not been identified, might have been among the six climbers killed in a May avalanche, considered in Rainier’s history. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s a safe way to get in there,” NPS spokesperson Patti Wold , “so we can remove the remains and try to give their family some closure.”
*An earlier version of this article said that the six climbers had died on Mont Blanc. They had actually been climbing a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif, not the Mont Blanc summit itself. We regret the inaccuracy.