FATAL FALL ON MOUNTAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 April 1933, Page 7

FATAL FALL ON MOUNTAIN

A CANADIAN TRAGEDY.

[BY CABLE —PKESS ASSN. —COPYEIGHT.]

CALGARY (Alberta), April 9.

Mr R. E. C. Paley, aged 25 years, an International Research Fellow, who was generally regarded as England’s leading mathematician, was killed at Lake Louise, on Saturday, while he was skiing with friends. His body was recovered on Sunday, after hours of digging in crumbled rock and snow. Climbing on skis to the perilous edge of a fossil mountain, to within a few hundred feet from the top of a 9,600 feet peak, Paley pitched into a valley below, as the result of due of his skis scraping on some light rock, and starting an avalanche. He took the dangerous . ascent alone, and later some of the party, which set out to track him, learned of the disaster. On the top of Deception Pass, Paley’s tracks led up the steep side of the fossil mountain. After a short climb, the trackers saw Paley, high above them, standing still for a moment. They started up after him. As he worked out towards the fatal ledge, Paley’s extra weight on the ledge and the loose rock sent him hurtling to his death. Rock, debris and snow tumbled in front and behind him.

The deceased went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Boston, last autumn, for joint research and mathematical analysis. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge.