With high-tech and special equipment, mountain rescuers searched for a missing 24-year-old from Lower Saxony on the Hochkalter. In the afternoon, the police speak of a last straw and climb up again with the helicopter. In the evening then the disillusionment.
Hopes are fading: the rescue workers stopped searching for a mountaineer who had an accident in the Berchtesgaden Alps again in the evening. A police spokesman said in the evening that “everything that was humanly possible” and technically feasible had been done. In the next few days, the search will be continued depending on the situation – if the resources allow it.
In the Hochkalter area near Ramsau, the situation is dead winter. Temperatures are below freezing. After six days there is little hope of finding the 24-year-old alive. Previously, there had been a new track: a signal had been received from a rock face in the search area using a special positioning technique on a helicopter. The helicopter had therefore risen again to bring mountain rescuers to the area.
The police spoke of a last straw for that day. The 24-year-old from Lower Saxony made an emergency call on Saturday because he had slipped in a snowstorm just below the summit of the 2,607-meter-high Hochkalter near Ramsau near Berchtesgaden and could hardly hold his ground in the steep and slippery terrain. After several phone calls, contact broke off.
Because of the adverse conditions, the search had to be postponed and then interrupted again. For days, the rescuers had waited in the valley, ready for action, until a helicopter with a special locating probe was finally able to take off on Wednesday. As a result, at least the young man’s backpack was found. A Bundeswehr Eurofighter was also deployed, supporting the rescuers with positioning technology and high-resolution aerial photographs.
The mountain rescuers had initially given up the search for the young man from Lower Saxony because the danger was too great. The helicopter then flew over the search area for the last time and picked up the signal, it said. What triggered the signal was initially unclear. The tracking technology reacts to semiconductors and reflectors, such as those sewn into some outdoor jackets.
Three teams of mountain rescuers and police mountain guides searched the steep gully and the rock faces above and below the site with avalanche probes and electronic tracking devices today, Thursday. During the search in the alpine terrain, they were secured to ropes and had special ice axes and avalanche emergency equipment with them.
