The group consisting of six people and a guide went missing on Tuesday evening amid bad weather conditions. 
 
 They set out to climb the "Aiguille d'Argentiere" peak on the Mont Blanc massif, which stands at 3902 metres. 
 
 The five people who died are believed to be young French nationals who were training with the UCPA (Union of outdoor sports centres), a French organisation which offers holidays to young people annually. 
 
 This year’s climbing season at Mont Blanc has been particularly deadly thus far. Two Belgians died on August 2 and a further six other climbers died between July 15 and 30 -- two Irish, two Finns, a German and a French national. 
 
 To some professional guides these deaths underline how dangerous and unpredictable the mountain is. They say there should be more control over entry to the national park. 
 
 Climbers currently do not need a permit to attempt Mont Blanc, which stands at 4,180 meters. 

 PARIS (AP) — Five French climbers died and a sixth was missing Wednesday on France's Mont Blanc, after a night of snow and wind on Europe's tallest mountain. 
 
 File - In this Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011 file photo, an alpinist walks down a ridge on the Aiguille du Midi (3,842 meters; 12 605 feet), towards the Vallee Blanche on the Mont Blanc massif, in the Alps,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This Feb. 19, 2003 file photo shows Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest mountain. A mayor in the French Alps says five climbers have died on Mont Blanc and a sixth is missing. The climbers disappeared... (Associated Press) 
 
 August is the height of the climbing season on Mont Blanc, where even in the warmest months fierce storms can strike quickly. Several mountaineers have died already this summer — including at least one experienced guide — and local officials say they fear many people come to Mont Blanc ill-prepared for the dangers. 
 
 The group of five climbers and a guide were reported missing overnight when they failed to return to a refuge after a planned trip to the Aiguille d'Argentiere, which tops out around 3,900 meters (12,800 feet). Mont Blanc, in addition to its primary peak, contains some 200 summits. 
 
 The bodies of five of the climbers were located Wednesday, while a sixth has not been found, said Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of Saint-Gervais, a town at the foot of Mont Blanc. 
 
 Search and rescue teams headed up the slopes and a helicopter took advantage of brief windows of calm weather to fly over the area, said Christophe du Payrat, a local official. 
 
 Mont Blanc touches France, Switzerland and Italy, and thousands try to reach its summit each year. 
 
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 A US climber who filmed his children, aged nine and 11, being knocked off their feet in a mini-avalanche as they tried to set a new mountaineering record on Mont Blanc has been condemned by the local mayor and climbers' associations. 
 
 Patrick Sweeney, who caught the incident on camera and posted on YouTube, was interviewed with his children on US breakfast television about how they survived the mountain's notorious "corridor of death". 
 
 On seeing the footage, however, Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of St-Gervais-les-Bains – the town where mountaineers begin their ascent of Mont Blanc – went on the attack on Monday. 
 
 He denounced Sweeney's "recklessness" and the promotion of the incident in the media, and told FranceInfo radio that Europe's highest peak was "becoming an amusement park where we're going to have gendarmes, rescuers and Pamela Anderson to save us". 
 
 Sweeney, a self-described "adrenaline junkie", was trying to beat the record set by a 10-year-old boy from London in reaching the summit with his younger son, PJ, and daughter Shannon. 
 
 "He was trying to break the record for stupidity," said the president of the national mountain guides' union, Denis Crabières. He expressed concern about climbers' use of social media to publicise their adventures, and said that Sweeney should have known better than to exploit his children, who would have been unaware of the extreme risk. 
 
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 In the news clip, PJ described being "pretty scared" when the avalanche hit, pushing Shannon on top of him. He added, however, that he wanted to make another attempt at scaling the 4,810m mountain, while Shannon wanted to wait another year. 
 
 Peillex said they would not be welcome in St Gervais. He told the Guardian that since becoming mayor in 2001 he has been campaigning for climbers to pay to be rescued if they abuse the services, which are paid for by the French taxpayer. He hit the roof last month when a Polish climber called for a helicopter "because he was tired". The rescue service refused to pick him up. 
 
 "Mont Blanc is not the New York marathon. It's not a trek. It's mountaineering," he said, noting that a Ukrainian climber was killed on Friday on the same corridor where the Sweeneys got into difficulty. 
 
 "Next time, he might be filming his children's death on reality TV," he said. 
 
 Two Irish mountaineers fell to their deaths on Sunday on the Dent du Géant section of Mont Blanc. 
 
 • This story was launched on Monday 28 July 2014 with the incorrect claim that the record for the youngest person to climb Mont Blanc was an 11-year-old girl from London. This has now been amended.
– Another tragedy has struck at the peak of climbing season on Western Europe's highest mountain: Five climbers have perished on Mont Blanc in France and their guide is still missing, reports the AP. Word went out that the climbers had disappeared yesterday evening when they didn't come back from a scheduled ascent of a 12,800-foot summit on the mountain. Rescuers recovered the bodies this morning, notes the BBC. The deceased are thought to be French nationals who were with a travel company that specializes in outdoor adventures for young people ages 6 to 39, reports RFI. Meanwhile, local officials are shaking their heads at the latest climbing catastrophe. At least eight people have died so far this summer, according to RFI. American climber Patrick Sweeney came under fire last month for trying to break a climbing record with his two kids, ages 9 and 11, whom he filmed getting tossed around by a small avalanche at the mountain's "Corridor of Death," reports the Guardian. "He was trying to break the record for stupidity," says the head of a local mountaineering guides' club. The mayor of the town at the base of the mountain calls Sweeney "reckless" and has banned him from visiting, telling the Guardian, "Next time, he might be filming his children's death on reality TV."