The highest peak in Europe, Mont Blanc, requires climbers to pay £12,640 (€15,000) beforehand in case they require rescue or pass away while on the mountain.
Adventurers who seek to ascend the 15,773-foot summit through a well-traveled French way will be required to pay a deposit after the local mayor denounced “pseudo-mountaineers” who risk their lives by playing “Russian roulette.”
The policy was imposed by Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, where climbers can reach the summit via the Goûter Route, after several individuals continued to disregard warnings.
The sizeable deposit is divided into two parts; €10,000 is used to cover the cost of a mountain rescue and €5,000 is used to cover funeral expenses.
Anyone with any level of climbing expertise can use the route, and according to officials, the number of novice climbers is rising.
The local government issued a strong warning against climbing in the middle of July due to heavy rockfall, and local guides had to halt their operations.
Recent hot conditions on the mountain made it more hazardous, exposing huge mountain fractures, and caused rockfalls.
In a phone interview with The Telegraph on Thursday, Mr. Peillex said: “Sometimes dumb people only respond to silly ideas.”
They behave in the same manner as someone who intends to kill himself. So I respond, “Let’s do things right and ask them to reimburse us for the expenses this will cause.”
In a statement posted on Twitter, Peillex said the idea for the deposit came after five Romanian visitors attempted the ascent ‘wearing shorts, trainers and straw hats’ and had to be turned back by mountain police.
‘People want to climb with death in their backpacks,’ he added. ‘So let’s anticipate the cost of having to rescue them, and for their burial, because it’s unacceptable that French taxpayers should foot the bill.’
If climbers choose to begin on the Italian side of the mountain, they will still be able to attempt to reach the peak without having to save up more than £10,000 in advance.
The decision was described as “surreal” by Roberto Rota, the mayor of Courmayeur, which is located on the Italian side of the border at the base of Mont Blanc. He added that the Italian side “would not impede the climb of hikers.”
The mountain isn’t a piece of property. As administrators, we limit ourselves to indicating when the paths are not in the best condition, but asking for a deposit to climb to the top is really surreal. You can decide to close a path or a passage if there is an actual risk,’ Rota told Italian daily, Corriere Della Sera.
Two mountain huts on Mont Blanc, the Tête Rousse Hut and the Goûter Hut, a distance that typically requires a three-hour climb, saw 102 fatalities between 1990 and 2017.
Falls, being struck by a falling boulder, and “stranding”—getting lost or trapped in poor weather—were the leading causes of mortality.
Just the previous two years alone have seen the deaths of 20 hikers on the peak and the rescue of about 50 more.
After 11 people were murdered in early July when a massive chunk of ice detached from a glacier on the north side of the Marmolada, the highest peak in the Italian Dolomites, there is now greater concern about the safety of mountain activities.