On Saturday, February 12, a member of the French Alpine Club lost his life on the slopes of Mount Malinvern.
Pascal Pompei was a climber with many years of experience. He departed with another climber and is thought to have lost his grip in the Dufranc couloir at the summit of the mountain. Two rescuers from the mountain gendarmerie rescue platoon rescued his climbing partner and transported the victim’s body to the station. According to Captain Corentin Hassmann of the PGHM: “According to initial findings, it appears that they were not roped together at that moment.” An investigation has been opened.
He is not the first person to have lost their life in the French mountains since the beginning of the year. Several skiers and climbers have been victims of fatal accidents.
On January 15, a forty-year-old man fatally collided with a five-year-old girl in the Flaine resort (Haute-Savoie). Two days later, on the slopes of La Rosière in Savoie, it was French actor Gaspard Ulliel who was the victim of an accidental collision that proved fatal for him. On January 25, a 23-year-old lost his life in a skiing accident on the Beaufortain massif in Savoie. The following week, on the 29th, a couple of climbers fell from an ice wall on the mountain of La Tournette in Haute-Savoie. The young man in his thirties passed away. The woman, meanwhile, was seriously injured.
A few days before the event that cost Pascal Pompei his life, a 16-year-old teenager fell victim to a fatal skiing accident in Courchevel Moriond in Savoie.
