A sixty-year-old British man has fallen more than 300 feet to his death while mountain biking in the French Alps on a camping holiday with nine friends. The body of the man, from Brighton, was discovered on Friday afternoon by police in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc.

He hired a bike on Friday morning and went for a ride alone along the Balcon Nord track, a popular mountain biking and walking trail.

Hikers discovered his bike impaled on a tree just below the track and alerted police.

A search by helicopter located the man’s body 330 feet below the track.

A spokesman for the Mountain Police in Chamonix said: “We do not know why the man fell. We are waiting for the results of a post mortem.

“The man hit several trees and fell a considerable distance – 100 metres. It is very steep in this section.

“We believe he was on his own. He was on holiday with friends but he was the only one who went biking that day. There are no witnesses to his fall.

“The Balcon Nord is a popular route and technically it is not too difficult.”

It comes a week after a British mountain climber plunged 130ft to his death while attempting to scale a glacier in the French Alps without a safety rope.

The 44-year-old died after he and a friend set off in poor weather conditions from their hotel in the Chamonix valley.

http://www.chamonix.com/