ALPINE TRAGEDY RECALLED.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3292, 10 August 1911, Page 3

ALPINE TRAGEDY RECALLED.

BURIED IN GLACIER OF MONT BLANC FOR 41 YEARS.

A broken alpenstock bearing the carved name, “Dr. J. Bean. Baltimore,” has just been found by a Chamonix guide hi the ice of the Glacier dcs Bossous, which “flows” down direct from the summit of Mont Blanc to the valley of Chamonix, and the find recalls the most terrible accident in Alpine history, when eleven climbers perished on the summit of the great white mountain in violent snowstorms which lasted a week.

In September, 1870, Rev. G. McCorkindale, of Glasgow, and two Americans Dr. J. Bean, of Baltimore, and Mr. Randall (both elderly men, witli little experience of the Alps), set out from Chamonix with eight guides, and safely reached the summit in doubtful weather. Hardly had the descent commenced when the' snowstorm started, and not one of the eleven climbers was seen again alive. A strong force of guides some oays later found the bodies of five victims, including the clergyman and Dr. Bean, but the other six were never found, having most probably fallen into crevasses. It is now thought, owing to the discovery of the broken alpenstock, that the bodies of the. six climbers, who have been buried in tlieir tomb of ice for the last forty-one years, have reached, the end of the glacier, which travels at the rate of about 500 ft. «*, year, and are not far from the surface of the ice at tlie ]ip of the Chamonix Valley. The longest period of time that a glacier, of ice river, has retained its dead in Alpine records has been fortyone years, ’he victims being Dr, Hamel and,'his guides, who perished qn Mont Blanc in 1 820. and whose bodies were found in the Bossons Glacier in 1861, as well preserved iti the ice as on the day of their death. The guides- at Chamonix are on the look-out for the six bodies.