The recent bad weather in Europe has led to the death from hypothermia of three hikers on the GR20 trek in Corsica. The three people died in independent incidents, two in the north of the island one in the southern part of the trek.
Although the GR20 route is way-marked, these pain marks quickly become difficult to see in bad weather and once off the trail you are on very rough ground. In normal conditions it's difficult to imagine dying of cold on this trek - usually people fear the heat. But the weather can change very quickly and these are very serious mountains where it can be really hard to get down to safer terrain if the weather turns bad. I have experienced snow in Corsica in the middle of July - people had to be rescued by helicopter from the Cirque de la Solitude. And since the trail is so rocky, conditions underfoot quickly become slippery and progress can be very slow.
Just a reminder really to all of us that these mountain treks demand respect, even though they seem to be increasingly popular and more and more feasible with guidebooks describing every step of the route.
