Paris: It was an unexpected find for the young French alpinist as he approached the summit of Mont Blanc. Poking out of the ice and snow on the shoulder of western Europe's highest mountain was a metal box containing precious gems – including emeralds, rubies and sapphires – worth hundreds of thousands of euros that had lain hidden for about 50 years.
The precious stones, around 100 in total, were neatly packed into sachets, some marked with "Made in India". It soon became clear that the historic haul, which has since been valued by jewellers at up €246,000 (£205,000), had belonged to someone on one of two Air India flights that crashed in 1950 and 1966, killing a total of more than 100 people.
The climber carried the treasure down the mountain and straight to local police. The prefect's office is now contacting Indian authorities to see if it is possible to trace the owner or their relatives.
"You can say the climber who made this find is someone very honest," local gendarme chief Sylvain Merly said.
"He saw very well that what he had in his hands was something very valuable, realising straight away that it was precious stones that had been very carefully wrapped.
"He was a mountaineer, he knew the history of the two plane crashes here and realised that this find was likely linked to those crashes. "Maybe he didn't want to keep something that had belonged to someone who died. So he handed it in."
26/09/13 Angelique Chrisafis/The Guardian
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The precious stones, around 100 in total, were neatly packed into sachets, some marked with "Made in India". It soon became clear that the historic haul, which has since been valued by jewellers at up €246,000 (£205,000), had belonged to someone on one of two Air India flights that crashed in 1950 and 1966, killing a total of more than 100 people.
The climber carried the treasure down the mountain and straight to local police. The prefect's office is now contacting Indian authorities to see if it is possible to trace the owner or their relatives.
"You can say the climber who made this find is someone very honest," local gendarme chief Sylvain Merly said.
"He saw very well that what he had in his hands was something very valuable, realising straight away that it was precious stones that had been very carefully wrapped.
"He was a mountaineer, he knew the history of the two plane crashes here and realised that this find was likely linked to those crashes. "Maybe he didn't want to keep something that had belonged to someone who died. So he handed it in."
26/09/13 Angelique Chrisafis/The Guardian
