THE family of a British climber who died 17 years ago yesterday in an accident in the Alps spoke of their shock after his body was found in a melting glacier.
Mike Seavers, 31, was part of an ill-fated climbing party that attempted to scale the 15,774ft (4,808m) Mont Blanc in February 1989 but were caught in a severe storm.
All four members of the group died. Two of the bodies were found in the following months. Mr Seavers’s remains and those of one of his friends, Dirk Ziolkowske, were spotted by a mountain guide as the glacier they were preserved in melted in the summer heat.
His parents, Ian and Pam Seavers, of Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, said yesterday: “We have been waiting for this news for a number of years.
“It’s a lot to take in after all this time. We always wanted his body back so we could bury it at home but now, after he’s spent all this time out there, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
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The others who died were Leslie Lawrence, 29, of Marlborough, Wiltshire, Bill Ogburn, 33, of Devizes, Wiltshire, and Herr Ziolkowske, 24, of Cologne. They had set out to conquer Europe’s highest mountain late in February, as part of their training for a more arduous trip to the Himalayas.
A fifth member of the group, Andrew Vaudin, of Chippenham, Wiltshire, decided to ski rather than risk the climb and later had to identify the two bodies when they were found.
Part-way up the mountain the group hit bad weather and high winds battered them as temperatures plummeted.
The climbers appear to have been separated and became disorientated before dying of exposure, cut off from help. When they did not return later that day, Mr Vaudin raised the alarm and a search party was sent out but no bodies were immediately found.