Mont Blanc climbing tragedies - behind the numbers

Just started making plans making the trip this May to Chamonix and skiing/climbing some of the “mandatory stuff” with a fellow mountain guide. But, as you may have heard in the previous weeks, another bad accident hit - involving expert Italian mountain guides. Four of them. The fine article at climbing.about.com outlined some of the reasons for the vast number of tragedies on the mountain.

A popular interpretation of the scary numbers (68 deaths for the whole of the Mont Blanc massif) is that the mountain is overcrowded. On summitpost.org, probably the most visited mountaineering site on the Web, Mont Blanc is the fifth most viewed mountain. 20.000 people are supposedly taking a shot at it each year. And indeed, a major portion of the fatalities occur in the summer months, when the crowd is at its peak - even though weather-related dangers are less prevalent during these months (save lightning, but that’s not a very common cause of death on MB). But, take a look at the recent tragedies.

“Naturally,” several accidents arise from people being way too brave and attempting routes they should only attempt with a guide; being unprepared, or just plain careless. But take a look at so many of these recent tragedies on Mont Blanc:

• four expert Italian mountain guides - January
• two young brits, including one “NG adventurer of the year” - also in January
• ice avalanche killing 10 in August

What do these have in common? The victims in the first two cases were professionals. In the latter case, the accident was caused by a chunk of ice breaking off of a glacier needle - an objective danger very unlikely to happen in the early hours of dawn.

According to this past year’s figures, 68 out of 20 thousand lost their lives on the mountain, 0.34%. That’s not a very low number, but it certainly doesn’t make it a “deadly mountain” - like Nanga Parbat, let’s say. And, as a commenter pointed out at climbing.about.com, the figure is for the whole of the Mont Blanc Massif, encapsulating at least 5 popular, big time peaks.

But, Mont Blanc CAN BE a scary place in high season. The biggest danger is rockfall, so you definitely need a helmet on the mountain on the Grand Couloir section. The other objective danger on the hill is avalanches. There’s a lot of snow on this mountain with huge open slopes - so beware. The popularity adds to the avalanche risk, as there are a number of climber/skier induced slides.

There is no “final word of advice” we can give you here. Precaution, knowing your limits and everything else you should be doing/thinking of/meditating on when mountaineering, is valid here as well.

Our sincere condolences to the families of the 2008-09’s Mont Blanc victims.

Thanks to Inky Bob for the pic, which has nothing to do with climbing Mont Blanc, it’s just good CC stuff from Flickr.