Avalanche Mont Blanc

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Mont Blanc du Tacul

Very worrying news out of Chamonix this morning with a massive avalanche down a major summit in the Mont Blanc region.

The missing include five Austrians and three Swiss, and the nationalities of the other two were not immediately known. The avalanche was set off around 3 a.m by the fall of a huge block of ice on Mont Blanc du Tacul, one of the peaks in the Mont Blanc range, at an altitude of some 3,600 meters (11,800 feet).

Authorities have deployed a vast search team, involving three helicopters, dozens of rescue workers, doctors, Alpine guides and sniffer dogs. Mont Blanc du Tacul is along one of the routes that mountain climbers often used to reach the summit of Mont Blanc, western Europe's biggest mountain at 4,810 meters (15,780 feet).

I hope all these climbers are found safe and well -

Racing and Sports

25/8/08
Unfortunately they now believe they are buried underneath the massive ice serac that caused the avalanche in the first place. Little hope is held for any of the missing climbers.

The three Swiss climbers came from the Bern Canton and Roger knew all of them. A sad week for the Bern climbing community.