After almost a month, an Austrian police helicopter found the body of a missing climber on the Hochkalter in Upper Bavaria. As a police spokesman said on Friday, an alpine rescue team rescued the dead 24-year-old on Thursday.
The mountaineer from Lower Saxony set off on a high-alpine tour on September 17th when it snowed on the Hochkalter in Ramsau near Berchtesgaden. He then slipped below the 2,607-meter-high summit, as reported by the Bavarian Red Cross.
He made several calls to 911, saying he could barely hold himself up in the snowstorm and the freezing cold. According to “Bild”, he was injured when he slipped just below the summit and could hardly walk, especially since the terrain was steep and slippery. Then the contact broke off. Rescue workers had tried to find the young man in a large-scale search operation, but the search had to be repeatedly interrupted or postponed due to the adverse weather situation.
According to “Bild”, the young man’s backpack was found four days after the missing person was reported. However, a large contingent of mountain rescue services, the police and several helicopter crews were still unable to find the climber on the snow-covered summit. On one day alone, three teams of mountain rescuers and police mountain guides were out and about, searching the steep gully and rock faces with avalanche probes and electronic tracking devices. During the search in the alpine terrain, they were secured to ropes and had special ice axes and avalanche emergency equipment with them.
The use of the Recco SAR helicopter buoy, a special sonar device, was also unsuccessful. Then the warmer temperatures of the past few days finally melted the snow a bit.
The missing person was then recovered in the already suspected chute on a snow field. Not far from the spot where his backpack had been discovered earlier. The cause of death is currently still under investigation. However, third-party debt is excluded.
