The three young men were swept away by an avalanche late October as they tried first on Mingbo Eiger, in the massif of Everest.
Le Monde
France is sending, Friday, November 5, a rescue team to try to find the bodies of Louis Pachoud Milosh Gabriel and Thomas Arfi, three young climbers swept away by an avalanche while attempting a first on the Eiger Mingbo (6017 meters), the highest close of Ama Dablam in the Everest massif.
This team of gendarmes, experts and a dog avalanche, will travel from November 5 to 17 in Nepal, said Thursday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) Lieutenant Colonel Lionel André, commanding mountain technical coordination Unit (UCTM).
Quastorze people departing
On site, the difficulties on the avalanche site will “really depend on the type of snow set in motion, the weather that followed and orientation to the sun. There are many things that make that [snow] may be more or less hard, “said Frederic Jarry, project manager for the national Association for the study of snow and avalanche research in Grenoble. “In general, deposit [avalanche] hardens over time,” he told AFP.
Of the fourteen people leaving, ten are of high mountain rescue platoon of police (PGHM). After an acclimatization to the altitude, they will spend “eight or nine days,” the avalanche site, located in the Khumbu Valley, he said.
The team also includes two experts in identification of the national gendarmerie, a doctor at the military school of high mountain, a mountain guide from the French Federation of Alpine Clubs and mountain (FFCAM) and a master dog. They take with them some 600 kilos of equipment.
Early research undertaken by Nepalese guides earlier this week were unsuccessful and were suspended Wednesday for three or four days, according to Ang Norbu Sherpa, president of the National Association of Nepalese mountain guide and member of the ‘search and rescue operation.
A possible fall “several hundred meters”
Aged 27 to 34 years, Louis Pachoud Milosh Gabriel and Thomas Arfi belonged to national mountaineering Excellence Group, an elite formation of the Federation, and the last telephone contact with them since their camp back to October 26, according to FFCAM . The first recognitions have located their tracks until 5900 meters, whereas they had, it seems, turned around a hundred meters below the summit.
According to reports, they were “screened at the foot of the face” by the avalanche, a drop of “hundreds of meters”, said Tuesday AFP FFCAM president, Nicolas Raynaud .
“We went to the foot of the face, it was found that there was a deposit of snow very important with the highly compacted snow or frozen solid with clues to the surface, backpacks, the material. and that suggests that the bodies of three climbers are under avalanche deposit. “
The aim now is to recover, “if indeed we can do,” he said.
“It is not excluded that the bodies that cast we can not recover,” said for his part the former deputy commander of the PGHM Chamonix Stéphane Bozon, who oversaw a research victims Nepal after a deadly avalanche at the base of Kang Guru (6981 meters) in October 2005, quoted Thursday by the Dauphiné released. September eleven French and Nepalese, led by Daniel Stolzenberg, a mountaineer sexagenarian veteran, had been buried by a cast that had swept their base camp while they were asleep, and the last body had been released in July 2006 .