INTERNATIONAL: Peaks

Last week the following peaks made the following news:

Monte Pio Undecimo was the name solemnly conferred on a bald grey peak of the Roman Apennines by Italian Alpinists who wished to honor Pope Pius XI, in his youth a famed and fearless mountain climber. At the very tip of Monte Pio Undecimo, 100 climbers last week knelt in the whistling wind, heard mass celebrated by agile Father de Carlatonio, who also blessed a bronze tablet. Less agile, Bishop Pensa de Penne et Atri simultaneously celebrated another, more pompous mass at the mountain’s foot.

Puy de Dome, rounded, verdant peak of Central France (4,800 ft.), site of a Roman temple to Mercury and a modern French observatory, was announced for auction last week, with a minimum reserve price of 50,000 francs ($2,000). Middle class Frenchmen, to whom the Puy de Dome has been a favorite picnic ground for 40 years, gloomed over Paris editorial prophecies that a syndicate would snap up the bargain, erect an expensive “palace-hotel” catering to U. S. tourists.

Mont Blanc, highest peak in Switzerland, was being climbed last week by Georges Fleury, a 20-year-old Swiss boy, and a party of friends. A bolt of lightning struck Alpinist Fleury, killed him instantly, hurled his body into a 1,600-foot gorge, knocked the three other members of the party senseless for 20 minutes.