The mountain rescuers in Berchtesgadener Land, who have been trying to get an injured 24-year-old mountaineer from Lower Saxony from the more than 2600 meter high and now snow-covered Hochkalter since Saturday, also had to stay in the valley on Tuesday. The weather conditions on the mountain with up to three meters of fresh snow, icy rock, dense clouds and strong gusts of wind still did not allow the rescuers to climb.
The man who had set off on the high-altitude tour alone had made an emergency call on Saturday afternoon because he had slipped off the path on a ridge into steep terrain. All attempts by the rescuers to locate him using technical means or to fight their way up to the suspected accident site at over 2400 meters on foot have so far failed due to the extreme weather conditions. They last reached the victim on his mobile phone on Saturday evening.
In view of the dense and low-hanging clouds on the Hochkalter, only a few short helicopter flights have been possible so far, during which the helicopter dropped some members of the Ramsau mountain rescue service directly below the cloud line on Saturday. After hours of effort, they had reached an altitude of around 2,600 meters, but with snowfall, storms and extremely limited visibility, they had little chance of finding the missing person in the confusing terrain. The operations manager also had to stop similar attempts on Sunday so as not to endanger the lives of his people.
It was not until Monday evening that there was still an opportunity for a helicopter search flight: the lower limit of the clouds rose to around 2,300 meters for a good hour, and a police helicopter with mountain rescuers on board undertook a visual flight. According to the estimate of an experienced Ramsau mountain guide, the fresh snow in the gullies below the ridge now seems to be up to three meters high. The missing person was nowhere to be found until sunset – not even on the recordings, which mountain rescue workers later looked through half the night and analyzed with the appropriate software.
An experienced mountain guide from Ramsau estimates the depth of snow in the channels on the Hochkalter to be up to three meters from a helicopter.
(Photo: Ramsau mountain rescue service)
The so-called Recco buoy, with which the electronics of mobile phones or notebooks can be detected, for example, could not be used by the mountain rescue service by Tuesday evening. To do this, the helicopter would have to come slightly above the search area, because the probe emits its search signal downwards. The weather should improve on Wednesday, and search flights with the Recco buoy should be possible by Thursday at the latest.
“The emergency services went to the limit,” says the head of the Chiemgau mountain rescue service, Nik Burger, describing the deployment so far. Even after several days under extreme conditions, the hope of finding the casualty alive is not given up. Something like this happened again and again in the past. According to Burger’s assessment, the 24-year-old fell into a sudden change in the weather, which can often occur in the mountains. The ascent to the summit of the Hochkalter is considered challenging even in stable late summer weather conditions.