**UPDATED** No hope of finding further survivors on Tacul

After yesterdays helicopter reconnaissance trip over the avalanche zone on Mont Blanc du Tacul, Regis Lavergne from the PGHM has again stated that the conditions in the area are just too dangerous to risk the lives of his rescue team to retrieve the bodies of the 8 alpinists that remain up there. With the use of RECCO (radar echo) equipment and from signals picked up using avalanche tranceivers, they have established that the missing climbers are buried at least 20m below the surface, under the debris of the serac ice wall, around 1500m below the point where the wall broke off. It seems that the serac fell in two parts; the one sweeping away the victims took them in the direction of the Bossons glacier and then swept them up and over a wall of seracs more than 100m high. It is now thought likely that they came to rest in a crevasse and so could easily be buried as far as 50m down. The probability of more serac falls and the sheer volume of snow and ice that needs to be excavated means that it could be several weeks before they can be recovered.

Progress has been made on identifying the climbers; it is not 5 Austrians as initially thought, but and Austrian guide and 4 German clients (three men and one woman) aged between 28 - 43 and a Swiss guide with a couple from the Bern region, aged 28 to 34.

The size of the ice wall that came down on the groups was phenominal - some 200m wide - that it's a miracle that any of the climbers up there escaped with their lives. As we mentioned in our earlier report, it is not unusual for seracs to fall in this area but it is nigh on impossible to predict when they are likely to come down. Serac falls are caused by a build up of ice and not necessarily influenced by recent snowfall or temperature fluctuations. However, Xavier Chappaz, President of the Compagnie des Guides summed it up - "if we were to avoid the danger of serac falls, we would remain in the valley". He went on to confirm what every alpinist knows "when it is not possible to take another route, always try to pass underneath [the serac walls] as quickly as possible". Tragically, with the apparent speed and silence of Sunday's serac fall, the climbers just didn't have a chance to get out of the way.

**UPDATE** 10.30am 25/08/08

After yesterdays terrible avalanche on Mont Blanc du Tacul, rescues services say there is now no hope of finding any of the remaining climbers alive. There are still eight people known to be missing, 5 Austrians (including a guide) and 3 Swiss, who were swept away after a wall of ice nearly 200m wide, broke off at 3600m, triggering an immense avalanche on the North Face of the mountain. Two Italian climbers who were also feared to be missing, have since been accounted for safely back in Italy.

Whilst we have seen and heard considerable helicopter activity around town today, poor weather and unstable conditions put an end to the immediate search yesterday. 4 helicopters and 40-50 rescue workers were called back to base as risks to the rescuers themselves were deemed too high to continue. It is now accepted that any subsequent rescue attempts will be to recover bodies not survivors and a helicopter is due to fly over of the area later today, looking for further signs of the missing climbers.

Regis Lavergne, a spokesperson for the PHGM said “from the moment we could locate them with radar echo and surface analyses; it was already five hours after the avalanche — so there's no more hope. They fell between 1000 and 1500m”. Jean-Yves Moracchini, who was in charge of the rescue, said that all they had managed to find so far of the missing climbers were two rucksacs, a shoe and a transceiver device.

Whilst over 40 climbers were in the area at the time, 16 were directly affected by the slide and seven required hospital treatment. 30 year old survivor, Nicolas Duquesne, from Nice spoke to reporters from his hospital bed yesterday where he was being treated for a broken ankle and bruising. "The guide shouted, 'Run fast! Run fast!' It didn't make any noise. It really was impressive. We had just enough time to move away to the right before getting hit ... We were really lucky." Two people still remain in Sallanches hospital this morning, one of whom, a Chamonix guide, is being treated for a broken vertebrae, although thankfully does not appear to be at risk from paralysis.

National and international news and television crews have descended on the town today awaiting further updates on the incident. Interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, who flew over the scene of the avalanche yesterday, said that this is "the most significant accident in France for more than 10 years".

As soon as we hear more we'll update this section.