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The Times - ‘It was stubborn and stupid. They didn’t have a tent or even a spade’

Mark Emerson, 30, and his ill-equipped companions made successive calls by mobile phone after being stranded by a blizzard at an altitude of 13,200ft (4,052m). With temperatures plunging to -15C and winds rising to 75mph, the French rescue team struggled towards the stricken group, who had endured a night exposed to the elements without a tent and with no spade to dig themselves a snow hole.

The rescue team, listening to increasingly agonised calls from the climbers, made it to a point some 3,900ft below them. But with the weather against them, they could get no closer. Italian rescue workers, dispatched separately, were forced to turn back.

“Their situation was desperate,” said one rescue worker. “We practically listened to their final hours as they happened.”

Mr Emerson, who was born in Scarborough and whose family live in Moulton, North Yorkshire, died alongside his girlfriend, Jane Jerram, 26, from New Zealand. The two other victims were Clement Morgane, 25, from France, and a 27-year-old Chilean woman. …

After recovering the bodies of Mr Emerson and his companions, French police used the tragedy to stress that inexperienced climbers were taking excessive risks in the Alps.

“The group decided on this mythical climb without taking into account the weather forecasts. This is stubborn-ness and stupidity,” said Stéphane Bozon, the captain of the High Mountain Police in Chamonix, France. “They persisted despite the weather and focused only on climbing Mont Blanc. Their responsibility is total.”

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