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Caught in the middle of a rock fall

submitted by eric3579

2 years 2 months 4 weeks ago

Rock Collapse on the Goûter Route/Goûter Couloir (Grand Couloir). Also known as the "Corridor of Death" or "Gully of Death"
The accident captured on the way down from Mont Blanc, July 2020.
Luckily all ended well, the climber was rescued later by helicopter.

Goûter Route is the one of the two normal mountaineering routes used to reach the Mont-Blanc summit, and the most popular one.
Crossing the Grand Couloir is very dangerous, mainly because of falling rocks or ice.
From 1990 to 2011, the PGHMF registers show 291 rescue operations in the Goûter couloir, which resulted in 74 deaths and 180 injuries and from 1990 to 2017 347 rescue operations resulted in 102 deaths and 230 injuries.
It means on average, 3.7 fatal accidents per summer season, representing the highest frequency in the Alps.

7 Comments

Note to self: in case of rockfall play dead and it should wander off down the mountain and leave you alone, maybe after a few taps to check you out.

Second note to self: stay away from the corridor of death, no matter how much fun it sounds.

you'd think with such a high incident rate, they would come up with a safer route/solution? even a large metal shield they could crawl under seems like a no-brainer. like a turtle shell - could tie it to that rope and send it back over to the next climber.

maybe the local emergency-helicopter-pilot economy depends on these "thrill seekers" ?

The issue has been studied.
https://www.petzl.com/fondation/s/accidents-couloir-gouter?language=en_US

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326840371_Rockfalls_in_the_Grand_Couloir_du_Gouter_Mont-Blanc_massif_An_interdisciplinary_monitoring_system

you'd think with such a high incident rate, they would come up with a safer route/solution? even a large metal shield they could crawl under seems like a no-brainer. like a turtle shell - could tie it to that rope and send it back over to the next climber.

maybe the local emergency-helicopter-pilot economy depends on these "thrill seekers" ?

The Death Couloir - Mont Blanc has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.

Digitalfiend says...

Yeesh some of those rocks were bigger than her head - I can't imagine that helmet would have done much to protect her from a rock that size traveling with that much speed. So lucky.

That's what you call being between a rock and a hard place.

> The accident captured on the way down from Mont Blanc, July 2020.

Right in the middle of COVID?!

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