FREDERIC SERRE
The 1019 Report
Friends and hiking colleagues of 22-year-old Hudson school teacher Léo Dufour took to social media last week to express their grief over the death of the Vaudreuil-Dorion resident, whose body was found by hikers May 10 on Mount Allen in the Adirondack Mountains of Vermont. Dufour was reported missing at the end of last November while hiking alone.
Hundreds of hikers expressed their sadness, while others issued warnings about the dangers of hiking alone.
“Be careful, friends, you see, even if you have a lot of experience, accidents can happen. Please be careful, and never hike by yourself,” commented Rachel Hamel on the 226,000-member Facebook group, Les Trippeux de Randonnée, which published notes of condolences to the family of Dufour.
Dufour, a physical education teacher at École St. Thomas, was reported missing to New York State Police at about 11 p.m. on Nov. 30 by his family as he hiked on Mount Allen, which is considered to be one of the most difficult climbs among the 46 Adirondack high peaks, with summits above 4,000 feet.
Dufour had driven to the nearby town of Newcomb the previous day from Vaudreuil-Dorion. Early Dec. 1, forest rangers began searching for Dufour. New York State Police first located Dufour’s snow-covered car at the Mount Adams trailhead. Rangers then found one set of tracks in the trail leading from Dufour’s car up Allen Mountain, but snowfall hampered tracking.
On May 10, hikers in the area made the grisly discovery of human remain and called 911. Authorities immediately contacted Dufour’s family and ordered an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Personal items belonging to Dufour were found near the body. Foul play, meanwhile, has been ruled out.
According to friends of Dufour, the young man went hiking by himself that day, but they said he was an experienced hiker who had climbed to the top of 32 of the 46 mountains in the Adirondacks. According to New York State Police, Dufour had successfully climbed Mount Allen and is believed to have begun his walk back to ground level when he vanished.
In all, 59 rangers spent nine days last December searching nearly 400 miles by foot over wintry, rugged mountain terrain. Two State Police helicopters equipped with Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras transported crews, dropped off supplies, and conducted aerial searches as weather conditions allowed.
Early in the search, rangers found what they believed was Dufour’s water bottle near a rockslide close to the summit of Allen Mountain. His phone also registered “two pretty definitive satellite hookups” at a lower elevation on Allen Mountain, police said in December.