A Danish hiker fell to his death on Wednesday in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps after slipping from a path, emergency services said, just a day after four climbers were found dead on the iconic peak.
The 61-year-old man was walking through a steep area near Saint-Gervais-les-Bains in the Haute-Savoie department in eastern France when he fell about 100 feet, officials said.
The fall killed the man instantly, the PGHM mountain police in Chamonix said.
Wednesday’s deaths come a day after four climbers, two Koreans and two Italians, were found dead on Mont Blanc himself after being stranded on the highest peak of the Alps for days in severe weather.
The four mountaineers had “died of exhaustion,” the Haute-Savoie prefecture told AFP.
A senior PHGM commander told regional daily Dauphine Libere that they briefly reached the Italian climbers by phone and found out their location 4,600 meters up on the north side of Mont Blanc, but that the connection was lost.
With its 4,809 meters, Mont Blanc is Western Europe’s highest peak and very popular with climbers from all over the world. However, getting over the mountain is risky.
In 2022, a French mayor said conditions on Mont Blanc were so dangerous that climbers should pay a €15,000 deposit to cover rescue and possible burial costs, BBC reported. Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of Saint-Gervais, then criticized “pseudo-climbers” who insisted on trying to climb “with death in their backpacks”.