The bodies of two men have been found by climbers on Wednesday afternoon on the goulotte Boivin under the Dôme des Ecrins. The bodies had been there for some time and the police think they may belong to an Italian group missing since November 2012.
The bodies were about 50 meters apart, encased in ice at 3500 meters altitude. Rescue workers were air lifted to the goulotte on Thursday morning at 5am and were able to free the bodies and descend them to La Bérarde where they were transported to Grenoble. The climbers had already covered two thirds of the descent. The descent would have required a number of abseils on a complicated route. It is believed that the bodies are from a group of three missing Italian climbers, Damiano Barabino, a heart specialist, Francesco Cantù, head of deparment for heart surgery at Lecco and Luca Gaggianese, an instructor with the Italian Alpine Club in Milan.
On the 25th of November, 2012 the three Italian climbers left the "pré de Madame Carle" near Briançon in the Hautes-Alpes to climb the goulotte Gabarrou-Marsigny. An extremely difficult ice couloir of 1250 meters that leads to the Dôme des Écrins. They reached the summit of the barre des Écrins (4102 metres) then bivouaked at 3900 meters on the descent. The following day they contacted the rescue services to say they were in difficulty. The weather, strong winds and low cloud made any rescue attempt by helicopter impossible. A ground rescue was unable to reach the men due to fresh snow and avalanche risk. The group were last heard of by telephone on the afternoon of the 26th when they said that they were attempting to descend by abseil. After a week of searching the rescue mission was abandonned. Fresh snow meant that there were no signs of the missing climbers.
http://www.camptocamp.org/routes/54048/fr/dome-de-neige-des-ecrins-goulotte-boivin
Update The bodies have been confirmed as those of Damiano Barabino and Luca Gaggianese. The PGHM will start searching for Francesco Cantù in the same location.