A schoolboy has survived a night clinging on to an icy rockface near Mount Blanc after seeing his father plunge to his death.
The pair, said to be Americans living in London, were climbing down the notoriously treacherous Les Droites mountain on Wednesday evening when the accident happened.
They had reached 3,700 metres when the 61-year-old father fell down his rope at around 9pm, Le Dauphiné Libéré reported.
Stephane Bozon, commander of the Chamonix mountain police, said the man fell around 40 metres to his death.
His 15-year-old son raised the alarm but it was impossible for rescuers to reach him in thick fog. A helicopter eventually took him off the mountain more than 10 hours later, at 7.30am the next day.
France 3 Alpes reported that the teenager had stayed in contact with the emergency services through the night and was found uninjured but suffering from mild hypothermia.
His father’s body was recovered from the valley below.
Another woman died in the French Alps on Friday. The 76-year-old fell from a path while walking in the Mount Blanc massif with her husband and two children, local media reported.
The accidents came after a series of deaths on the range that prompted a warning against treating it as an “amusement park”.
An American climber who tried to take a world record by taking his children, aged nine and 11, up Mount Blanc spared outrage last year, when they were almost killed in an avalanche.
Patrick Sweeney said he had no regrets about the climb, adding: “It’s a heck of a lot better than having them sitting at home wasting their minds on Minecraft or TV or something like that.”
