TRAGEDY OF A SLIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

TRAGEDY OF A SLIP

ONE DEAD AND TWO INJURED CLIMBER'S FATE IN ALPS When disaster overwhelmed a climbing party on the Aiguille d'Argentiere, in the Mont Blanc Alpine Range, above Chamonix, recently, a London Congregational minister was killed and his nephew and another young man seriously injured. The dead man, the Rev. Frank Lenwood, M.A., minister in charge of the Greengate Congregational Church at Barking Road, Plaistow, London, was on holiday in Switzerland with his wife. The injured climbers are Mr. David Bryson, Mr. Lenwood's nephew, and Mr. Colin Dawson, a Cambridge undergraduate. A fourth member of the ill-fated party, Miss Margaret Leith. Mr. Lenwood's niece, escaped unhurt. The climbers had made a successful ascent of the " Needle," which is nearly 13,000 ft. high, and were coming down, roped together, when one of them slipped on the middle glacier. At the time they were 9000 ft. up. Mrs. Lenwood was not with the party, and had left on foot to meet them, when suddenly she met a guide running to give the alarm. - Sensing something was wrong, Mrs. Lenwood asked the guide what was the matter, but he hurried on.

After he had warned the rescue guides the guide overtook Mrs. Lenwood and told her the grim news. The dangers of the rescuers were increased by the fact that Miss Leith had lost her glasses in the fall. Her feet had to be guided at every step. Mr. Lenwood, who was 56, had been minister at Greengate Congregational Church for the past eight years. He was formerly foreign secretary of the London Missionary Society and was in Tndia from 1909 to 1912. Among other nosts he had was that of tutor at Mansfield College. He was an expert climber and went to Switzerland practically every year.