Saturday, 06 September 2014, an alpinist finds body on the Vallée Blanche.
Two years after disappearing on the Valley Blanche, the body of the Belgian snowboarder, Christophe Van Boxtel, has been found on the Glacier du Geant.
Christophe, an architect from Antwerp, was last seen alive on 30 January 2012 at 13:40. He was 35 years old and frequently took vacations in the mountains.
At the time, the search was hampered by bad weather and a large search area.
When Christophe disappeared, it is most likely that he fell into a crevass. Is now possible to estimate the location of his fall into the crevasse as 500 metres above the serac fall, on the Geant Glacier near the Requin refuge. This could explain why the rescuers were not able to locate him by calling his mobile phone, as he might have been deep in a crevasse.
Annually, on the Mont Blanc massif, there are over 100 fatalities. Frequently, corpses do reappear at the snout of a glacier and occasionally at a serac fall.
Retreating glaciers and melting ice can accelerate this process.
Christophe's body has been released to his family, bringing closure to all those that loved him.
