FAITS DIVERS EXPRESS

LES HOUCHES/SAINT-GERVAIS
A blue light on a mountain…

A short time ago the Chamonix mountain police received an emergency call. Someone was using a blue light to send an SOS in Morse code from Prarion! Somewhat surprised, the rescue police telephoned the restaurant, the “Hors-pistes”, which is located up there. The call caused the owner, Georges Hottegindre, quite some amusement and prompted some reassuring words to the mountain police. The so-called SOS was in fact the flashing of a blue light which sits on top of this restaurant to light it up against the night sky. But those who spotted it hadn’t got it completely wrong; the owner had programmed the blue flashing light to use Morse code to spell out the name “Hors-pistes”. For anyone who’s not familiar with Morse code, SOS is spelt out by dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot.