Without a mobile phone, food and drinking water: A mountaineer from Rhineland-Palatinate spends four nights in the mountains. That he was found unharmed came as a surprise, even to the police.
After a five-day odyssey through a Bavarian mountain forest, an 86-year-old was rescued unharmed by the mountain rescue team on Sunday afternoon. According to the police, the man from Rhineland-Palatinate set off alone to Garmisch-Partenkirchen last Wednesday to climb the Alpspitze in the Wetterstein Mountains. When his wife couldn’t reach him the next day, she reported him missing.
Despite an intensive search on the ground and from the air as well as a public manhunt, the police and mountain rescue services were initially unable to track down the man. It was not until Sunday afternoon that a mountain biker discovered him on a forest road at the edge of a hut – and made an emergency call.
According to police, the 86-year-old was taken to hospital to be examined. He was “exhausted but in good health.” He got lost on his tour and wandered through the forest in the Alpspitz area for days. He had lost his cell phone and didn’t have any food or water with him. According to the police report, he drank “from watering holes in the forest.”
When he was found on Sunday, the missing man immediately called his desperately waiting wife to tell her he was alive. The outcome of this missing person case is also a “happy ending” for the police.