Upon receipt of the hiker's alert on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m., the search began. It was first the high mountain gendarmerie platoon based in Hohrod which intervened. In difficulty in the snow near Lake Altenweiher, the 33-year-old man has not been heard from again. As his phone was out of charge, he could not be located.
Specialized mountain firefighters were also deployed. Three dog handlers and their Malinois trackers were mobilized, intervening in extreme conditions, on icy ground, at night, with very negative temperatures, struggling to stay on their feet.
Along with the dog teams, the firefighters also hired a drone pilot and his thermal camera. But in the middle of the night, the hiker was nowhere to be found. The search had to be stopped around 1 a.m.
“When it’s steep and icy, you have to turn around.”
Rescuers from the high mountain platoon took them back on Wednesday morning, with the support of the gendarmerie helicopter. It was late in the morning that the body of the resident of Soultzmatt was found, below a path leading to Rainkopf. Dressed in dark clothes, he was not visible. He was spotted from the helicopter.
-The hiker fell and hit a rock. The prosecution ordered an autopsy. He had ventured on snowshoes on icy ground: “On this type of ground, you need crampons,” recalls Captain Locatelli, commanding the high mountain platoon in the Vosges massif, “otherwise, you have to stay on flat ground. When it’s steep and icy, you have to turn around.”
In one week, the rescuers from the high mountain platoon intervened five times to free stranded hikers: “We asked them not to move and we found them all,” explains the officer.
Related News :