Marmolada Tragedy

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A terrible tragedy happened on Marmolada mountain today, at least 6 dead and many injured when a piece of glacier broke.

I was watching Marmolada today from a small peak above Arabba in the Dolomites mountains in the Italian Alps. The roads around where completely closed because of numerous bicycle marathons, so I could not go anywhere by car.

This is why I walked up a smaller mountain. There were many helicopters flying around and I thought this was related to the marathon. But the reason was this:

As of the moment of writing this text, I do not have much information (might add more later), but this seems to be on the part before getting to the ferrata route, near Punta Rocca. This should be on the right in the top picture above.

A number of years ago I climbed Marmolada solo by following glacier route. The photo above is from that climb and it was taken in early hours. If you follow the link you will see a zoomable map and realize where this is.

Marmolada (3343 m) is the highest mountain in the Dolomites group. The tragedy took place on its glaciated north side which is completely different from its steep south wall.

Not much is left of its glacier which is melting rapidly. From what I have heard, the tragedy took place in the early afternoon and because of high temperature. So this was the worst period to climb the mountain. It is incredible that people were going up in such hours.

But this is not surprising. Just yesterday I was descending Tofana di Roses near Cortina d’Ampezo (plan to add a report here in the site), and was surprised by the number of people going up. This was around noon already and with clouds coming.

I must say, I am always astonished seeing how irresponsible people can be in the mountains, going ill-equipped and without paying attention to the actual weather situation. 

As I see, some use this tragedy to claim that man-made global warming is to blame. There is even a video of Reinhold Messner dated July 4th, who also says that this is due to global warming.

It may be global warming, but how about responsibility and rational behavior? You do not climb such a mountain in the afternoon. It is also surprising to see in the local news that a 9 year old child is among missing, this is not an environment for kids. 

Previous Marmolada disasters

More than a century ago, more precisely in 1916, around 300 Austrian soldiers died there instantly when ice and snow suddenly broke from the massive and buried them.

When I climbed Marmolada in 2010, there was a hut on my way up, the Pian dei Fiacconi refuge. I did not stay there, I just wanted to ask for direction, but it was too early and nobody was up. Years later I saw a photo on Facebook, the hut was completely destroyed by an avalanche.  

These are just a few examples, there are many more.

Addition 24 hours later

It seems now that six people are confirmed dead, but 15 are reported as missing. Rescuers have been working all the time, even during the night, looking for survivors.

I was on the summit of Piz Boè (3152 m) today, and Marmolada was clearly visible. The picture below is how it looks from the summit, this is one day after the tragedy so you get some idea about snow/glacier situation:

Here I made a zoomed photo where the broken area of the glacier is clearly visible:

I would expect that the rest of the same glacier is now very destabilized. As you see, there is a steep wall left after the lower part was broken. The area should be closed for mountaineers.