10 Mountain Climbing Disasters Deadlier Than The Everest Movie
3. Not Even The Experts Can See An Avalanche Coming - 2012
The Mountain: France’s Mont Maudit, which literally translates to “Cursed Mountain,” is a part of the Mont Blanc range, which is the highest mountain in the Alps as well as the highest in Western Europe.
# of Deaths: 9 dead; 14 injured
The Story: As a former general secretary of the British Mountaineering Council and professional mountain guide, Roger Payne was an expert on avalanche danger, even teaching other mountaineers how to anticipate and avoid them. However, avalanches are generally unpredictable, and without a single weather warning one sprang up just before 5:30am on July 12, 2012. Falling ice struck an international group of 28 mountaineers, and their resulting descent set off a 150 meter-wide (492 ft.) avalanche which overtook those further down the mountain. Nine died, among them Roger Payne, and fourteen were injured.
A French survivor, Daniel Rossetto, told The Guardian that the snow arrived without warning, “I felt the snow hit me. We tried to resist it but it pushed us all the way down the slope for 250 meters (820 feet) to the place where we were found. We were caught up in it; it knocks you over, somersaults you around. Each knock makes you wonder if it's getting worse. It's like being in a washing machine." He was eventually rescued from underneath the snow, reaching an obvious conclusion: “The mountain is very unforgiving."
In addition to Payne, the dead included two British, two Swiss, two German and two Spanish climbers.