A 32 year-old man plunged 25m after falling through the side window of the Brevent gondola, leading to the arrest of the victim's three friends who were in the gondola at the time of the accident. The three friends agree that there was a dispute and some shuffling around but no violence, although there are some discrepancies in their stories. Sunday morning, weight tests were made on all the gondolas. Although no anormalities were found and the gondola re-opened Sunday, the prosecutors office will continue tests on the gondola in question on Monday to rule out equipment failure. The director of the Compagnie du Mont Blanc, which runs the Brevent lift station, maintains that, "in order for such an event to occur, a violent force would have had to have been applied against the side window." These gondolas are made to withstand winds in excess of 100 km/hr. The three friends are in custody, charged with manslaughter. Snowboarder dies on the Vallée Blanche A young British snowboarder in a guided group died on Sunday morning on the Vallée Blanche near the Requin Hut. Against glacier protocol it appears, as if the snowboarder had removed his snowboard to facilitate his progress. Unfortunately the snowboarder must have stepped on a fragile snowbridge and fell to his death in a deep crevasse.
