PERILS IN THE ALPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20990, 29 September 1931, Page 9

PERILS IN THE ALPS.

DEATH OF TWO CLIMBERS. | i CAUGHT IN SNOWSTORM. The number of deaths in the European Alps has been exceptionally high this year, owing to the sudden changes in the weather. The president of the Geneva section of the Swiss Alpine Club, who keeps a record, states that up to August 17 there were 35 climbing fatalities this year in the Austrian, Swiss, Italian and French j Alps. The highest total for I lie whole year j in the past ten years was 109 in both i 1927 and 1930. The lowest was 21 in I 1925. Thu number tends to increase | owing to the extension of ski-ing to the higher Alps. There were 35 deaths dur- J ing the last ski-ing season ,due either to avalanches or to exposure, A terrible experience recently befell three Alpine climbers on the Aiguille j d ' Argentiore, resulting in the death of two of them. The brothers Gobat, of Basle, and a friend named Wettstein, aged 32, of Zurich, who wero slaying at ' hampex, set out ou August 13, by the (ol du Chamois, for the JDupuis hut. At two o'clock on Friday morning they started for the Aiguille d'Argentiero. They reached the Bardetf Couloir, at an altitude of 11,500 ft., in a blinding snowstorm. Worn out. the climbers decided lo bivouac, and during the night one of Ihe brothers died from fatigue and exposure. Later the two survivors descended to the Saleinaz hut. but on the way Wettstein fell exhausted on a glacier. Gobat arrived alone at the hut. When a search party found Wettstein he showed no iiigns ut life. Artificial respiration \va3 tried in Tain for two hours.