The woman, who has not yet been publicly identified, had been climbing with a Slovakian woman and a German mountain guide when they were killed by an ice cliff collapsing high on the 4,465-metre mountain.
Advertisement
The bodies of three mountain climbers have been recovered after they were buried in an avalanche of ice and snow.
The women’s bodies were found on Wednesday evening and the guide’s early on Thursday, Lieutenant Colonel Stephane Bozon said.
Mont Maudit – translated as Cursed Mountain – is in the Mont Blanc range near the French town of Chamonix.
Rescue workers had to use chain saws and a backhoe to free them from the ice, Bozon said by telephone.
A statement by the interior minister said 16 gendarmes, two dogs and a helicopter were mobilized to find the victims and recover their bodies.
Rescue services launched a search for the climbers after they were reported missing on Wednesday, a day after they had set out on their climb on the mountain whose peak lies at 14,649 feet, it said. In the last seven days, 12 people have died in various mountaineering and extreme sports accidents in the French Alps.
Advertisement
“The group was buried by an avalanche of séracs, i.e. huge iceberg blocs”, representative of the rescuers told the FranceTVinfo website.
