British man with hypothermia rescued on Mont Blanc while ‘dressed for Sunday stroll’
A British man had to be rescued from Mont Blanc after attempting to climb one of the highest mountains in Europe in unsuitable clothes.
The man, thought to be in his late 20s, said he had wanted to make the hike to celebrate his birthday.
He was found close to death by Italy’s Aosta Valley Mountain Rescue on Sunday morning after he called for help the previous evening.
His body temperature was reportedly 25C, 10C lower than the hypothermia threshold.
Mountain rescue officials told Mail Online that Mr Hussein was “dressed as if out for a Sunday stroll”.
He was wearing hiking boots, hiking clothes and draped in a sheet when he was found by rescuers, rather than thick mountaineering clothes.
Mont Blanc is 4,809 metres tall and it has the highest fatality rate of any mountain in Europe.
The man had managed to raise the alarm by calling the Aosta Valley Alpine Rescue after he got stuck on the Bionnassay glacier at an altitude of 3,100 metres on Saturday afternoon.
A rescue mission was attempted by land on Saturday but did not succeed because of tricky weather conditions.
He was rushed to the emergency room of the Parini hospital in Aosta by helicopter in a serious condition.
“The man was equipped as a hiker and he did not have equipment and clothing suitable for progression on the glacier,” rescuers told local media.
He is now recovering in hospital and spoke to local press from his bed in the intensive care unit.
“I wanted to climb Mont Blanc,” he said. “I left on Friday from Val Veny to complete the ascent of the Italian normal route to Mont Blanc which passes through the Gonella refuge.”
He did not have crampons or ice axes, which are necessary to progress on the glacier, and was also hiking along a route that is now highly discouraged due to huge crevasses.
“I spent the night between Friday and Saturday in a tent on the Miage glacier. The next day I resumed my journey,” he said.
He described how the conditions on the mountain had worsened through Saturday afternoon.
“It was snowing and the wind was very strong. I lost my way to the Gonella so I decided to fall back to the Durier refuge. I was not very far, but in that situation it was impossible to reach it. I had to stop and tried to take cover.”
Mountain rescue officials were surprised when they found that the man was a British hiker, having initially thought that he could be a migrant desperately trying to take a mountain route to bypass border controls.
“His body temperature when he was found was 25C and the normal is 37C, he was about five minutes from dying and was lucky to have been found,” a rescue official told Mail Online.
“He was suffering from severe hypothermia and flown immediately to hospital where the doctors started working on getting his body temperature back to normal.
“When he called to say he was lost he said he would be OK as he had a weatherproof tent but it was more of a tarpaulin and all he had was hiking sticks.”
The official said that it is costly to send rescue crews up the mountain and “we are considering sending up a 1,500 Euro bill for the rescue.”
“He was in an evident state of hypothermia, exhausted,” said Paolo Comune, head of Alpine Rescue for the Aosta Valley.
“The mystery is how he got there, because there are holes and crevasses before you reach that zone. No one aware of the risks you face in that kind of territory would go up there at this time.”
