Higher, Colder, Deadlier Mont Blanc is Western Europe’s tallest mountain, and the world’s deadliest.→[More:] For four young English climbers—friends since boarding school, two of whom, Rob Gauntlett and James Hooper, had already become the youngest Britons to scale Everest—it held the promise of adventure, camaraderie, and escape from mundane worries. But on January 9, as the author reports, two of them plummeted nearly half a mile to a brutal death, leaving questions to be answered.