AOSTA – A man, 39, and a woman, 36, died on Thursday after a climbing accident in the d’Ayas valley in the Italian Alps, according to Val d'Aosta Mountain Rescue. 

 The alarm was raised on Thursday evening when the two climbers’ relatives called mountain rescue after they had not returned from their excursion. Mountain rescue searched throughout the night to no avail but on Friday morning the mountaineers’ bodies were recovered after being spotted from a helicopter.

 The two bodies were still connected and found near a vertical wall on the crest of the Rothorn mountain, over 3,000 metres up. The climbers fell 50 metres, according to La Stampa.

jhh