English Calamity

The English Calamity was a hiking accident on the Schauinsland mountain in 1936, in which five students aged between 12 and 14 died when caught in a blizzard.

During their Easter break, students from Strand School, a grammar school in the south of London, were on a ten-day long trip to the Black Forest, which included a five-day hiking trip. The head, and the only adult person in charge, was 27-year-old teacher Kenneth Keast, who taught English, German and Sports. His travel group consisted of 27 boys between the ages of 12 to 17, with 17-year old Douglas Mortifee, the oldest student on the trip, assisting as prefect. The trip wasn’t a school organised event and instead was privately organised by Keast, through the Londoner travel agency School Travel Service. The group arrived in Freiburg early in the morning of April 16th. On the 17th of April, they started the first part of their hike which was supposed to lead them over Schauinsland to a hostel in Todtnauberg called Radschert.

Wikipedia