LOST MOUNTAINEERS

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13791, 24 October 1908, Page 8

LOST MOUNTAINEERS

LOVERS' TRAGEDY AT THE SUM-

MIT OF THE JURAS

A young engaged couple, of Swiss nationality, climbed the Mont Soleil in the Jura Mountains, and lingering too long on the summit were overtaken by tog. Night came on, and through darkness and fog for hours they wandered vainly in search of the path. Finally the man fell over a precipice and was killed. The girl was found the following day, half frozen and completely exhausted, on the brink of the precipice, and was carried to St. Imier. On the Sunday evening also, in spite of urgent warnings, two young tourists started out in a deluge of rain to ascend the northern face of the mountain known as Benidicten Wand, to the south of Munich.

The missed the entrance to the "chimney," by which the climb is usually made, and got on to a ledge above a precipice nearly 1000 feet high. Here one of them slipped on the wet rock and fell over. For some hours his companion hung on to the shelf of rock, from which, in the darkness, he was able to move neither backwards nor forwards, uttering piteous cries for help. At last he. too, became exhausted, was unable to maintain his bold, and was hurled to destruction. The two bodies were found close to one another next morning by a party which had gone out in the hope of effecting a rescue.