Bavaria
Mountain climber had an accident and survived a fall with a body temperature of only 30 degrees
A call to her family saves the 26-year-old mountaineer from hypothermia (symbol image)
© Angelika Warmuth / DPA
A young mountaineer from Bavaria falls into a ditch filled with ice water while descending. She cannot move and her body temperature drops to 30 degrees. As if by a miracle, the 26-year-old can be rescued by the mountain rescue service.
This article first appeared on RTL.de.
Her body temperature was only 30.1 degrees Celsius – an area where it becomes life-threatening. But a mountain climber (26) who had an accident in Bavaria survived because mountain rescue workers pulled her out of a moat. A rescue almost at the last minute, as reported by Bergwacht Bayern.
26-year-old called family – then the cell phone battery failed
The accident happened when the 26-year-old ran from the Weilheimer Hütte over the Martinisteig towards the valley on Monday. She strayed from the path and fell several meters into the water-filled ditch. Injured arms and legs and soaked through, she could not go on.
Here, according to the announcement, she was lucky for the first time in an accident: the mountaineer could still call her family, a little later the battery of her cell phone failed at minus eight degrees Celsius. The relatives dialed the emergency number.
Rescue helicopter from Bergwacht Oberau could not land
When the Oberau mountain rescue service was alerted at 7:18 p.m., they could not speak to the victim because the cell phone was switched off. But the 26-year-old had given her parents the approximate coordinates of the place where she fell into the moat.
Because it was far from known routes, the emergency services could not find it at first. After about an hour, a team in the rescue helicopter discovered the woman with the help of a thermal imaging camera. But the helicopter failed to land in the rough terrain.
Accidental mountaineer repeatedly passed out
The rescuers had to climb to the unsuccessful mountaineer. In the meantime she was severely hypothermic and repeatedly passed out briefly. The 26-year-old was rescued by a winch and flown to the hospital by helicopter. “The young woman would most likely not have survived the night on the mountain,” writes the mountain rescue service.