The race opened on September 18, 1910, but Swiss authorities forbade flying as it was a Swiss holiday. The next day the weather turned bad and for the next four days either the Swiss or Italian side of the pass was clouded over. Chavez took his plane up for a look and was tossed about, "The machine, it was like a toy in that wind," he said later.

On September 23, weather cleared and Chavez decided to make an attempt. Slowly his plane climbed to the top of the pass. Witnesses on the ground reported that he seemed to be hanging onto the controls as the wind tossed his craft violently around. He made it through the dangerous, twisting gorges, though, and headed for a landing at the town of Domodossola on the Italian side. As he approached the landing field he gave the Bleriot a little gas to get past a road. Then suddenly it happened. The craft was so weakened by the high winds it failed under the strain. "I saw the two wings of the monoplane suddenly flatten out and paste themselves against the fuselage," a watcher said "Chavez was about a dozen meters up; he fell like a stone." Four days later Chavez, age 23, died of massive internal injuries.