Climbers Die in Blizzard in Alps

After four climbers died in a sudden blizzard in the French Alps, safety officials expressed frustration yesterday, saying the group was unprepared for the conditions and ignored warnings of bad weather. A 30-year-old British man and three women in their 20s froze to death on Mont Blanc late Monday or early Tuesday after the storm stranded them, the Guardian reports.

The students were wearing lightweight clothing when they set out at 3am Monday after nearly 2 days of weather warnings, police said. "They should have turned back," said one gendarme. "Every year we see this sort of thing." In separate incidents in the Italian Alps, a Belgian man and a German woman died in the same storm.  (More Alps stories.)