On Sunday evening, 21 October 2018, around 7 pm, Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne received an alert. A man went climbing Mont Blanc and did not return nor send any news.
The same evening, the search began, but the night was setting in, and the authorities had to stop until Monday morning.
After three days of intensive search, including several hours of helicopters flight, a methodical grid of trails in the area, PGHM will suspend their activity.
The victim, a man in his fifties, could be seen on the video surveillance of Vallot’s hut. He seemed to return on the “voie normale”, which leads to Mont Blanc tramway.
Dôme du Goûter, North part of Mont Blanc, Bionnassay glacier, sector, Mont Lachat, Tête Rousse, crevasses of all kinds and trails were investigated, even at different times, to vary the lighting. "We have not the slightest clue. No clothes, sticks, bags, "says the commander of the PGHM, Lieutenant-Colonel Stéphane Bozon.
The warm season is ending, so the last remains of snow have disappeared a long time ago. They have made room for ice and rock, that is why they “only dig the tip of the ice axe. A long fall with a disappearance in a crevasse seems to take shape”, said Bozon.
Moreover, the weather forecast predicts snow for the end of the week, the commander laments: “We are moving towards a new case of disappeared in Mont Blanc”, explaining also that they have “exploited all that was exploitable”.
