2024-01-16 07:17:42
A 26-year-old snowboarder from Germany got lost in the Resterhöhe/Pass Thurn ski area near Mittersill on Monday afternoon. The man was saved in a complex operation.
He was stuck in a snow hole away from the secured pistes and could neither go forward nor back. Mountain rescuers, mountain rescue dog handlers, alpine police and mountain railway employees searched for the missing person in darkness, heavy snow and wind. The drunken man was finally found around 7 p.m. He was already hypothermic.
The local mountain rescue center in Mittersill was alerted at 4:52 p.m. Friends of the snowboarder had made an emergency call because they had missed him. 22 mountain rescuers from Mittersill under the command of Rudolf Steger, three dog handlers and three alpine police officers immediately started a search. Employees of the mountain railways with skidoos and snow groomers as well as the Pinzgau disaster officer also took part in the operation. The neighboring Tyrolean mountain rescue center in Jochberg was also alerted, and 15 Tyrolean mountain rescuers got ready.
“Due to the bad weather, the use of drones or helicopters was not possible,” said the local branch manager of the Mittersill mountain rescue service, Gerfried Walser. The search was also made more difficult by the fact that cell phone tracking was initially not possible. Cell phone contact was established with the 26-year-old, but he was only able to provide vague information about his location.
That’s why the emergency services were divided into groups to search for him in different directions. Finally, with great effort, the Alpine police officers managed to get a live location from the man via WhatsApp.
The mountain rescuers found the snowboarder in open terrain between the Hanglalm lift and Hartkaser lift at around 1,800 meters above sea level in Tyrol. He couldn’t free himself from the deep snow. The uninjured but hypothermic man was carried to the piste on a mountain stretcher in a vacuum mattress and from there transported with a piste machine to the valley, where his friends were already waiting for him.
“The cooperation between all emergency services in the cross-state operation was excellent,” said Walser. The 26-year-old was also very lucky that the cell phone location was still successful. The search area was very large. “You shouldn’t rely on cell phone tracking alone,” Walser pointed out, pointing out that tracking may not work due to various factors, for example if you are no longer able to send your location or the battery is empty.
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