The French Mountain Gendarmerie Rescue Team discovered the bodies of two Russian tourists who went missing on December 30, 2011, on Mont Blanc on the 10th.
The rescue team said that after the relatives of the missing tourists reported them missing, the team had been searching for them and eventually found their bodies in a tent at an altitude of 2,300 meters. The tent’s roof had collapsed under the weight of the snow, and the two died from suffocation and hypothermia.
The two Russians arrived in the town of Chamonix at the foot of Mont Blanc on December 24 and then began their climb. They had successfully scaled Mont Blanc the previous summer, in 2010.
Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps and the tallest in Europe, standing at 4,807 meters above sea level. It lies on the border of France, Italy, and Switzerland and is considered the birthplace of modern mountaineering. Although not extremely high in elevation, Mont Blanc features rugged terrain, year-round snow at its summit, and treacherous crevasses across millennia-old glaciers, leading to frequent climbing accidents and casualties.