Two ice climbers in the Zemm Gorge in the Tyrolean Zillertal caused a great deal of excitement at the Ginzling Mountain Rescue Service on Wednesday evening. Because an emergency had to be accepted, the phone of local manager Ulli Huber ran hot.
“Does it really have to be, in the evening in the dark with a headlamp next to a busy road, to climb into an ice fall?” It was also so big because, according to eyewitnesses, a climber’s headlamp flashed red backwards. The consequence: numerous motorists who were traveling in the gorge to Ginzling suspected an emergency. Ulli Huber, the local manager of the Ginzling mountain rescue service, had the phone ringing almost constantly. He counted around 15 calls. Huber then contacted the Tyrol control center, where witnesses had already reported the “emergency”. No contact with climbers possible. “I went straight to the ice fall,” says the mountain rescuer. A telephone or call contact with the ice climbing duo was not possible, the ascent to the wall would have taken too long for Huber. That’s how he observed the situation. Very slowly on the way “The climbers were very slow, I waited about an hour to be sure that it wasn’t an emergency.” End the “operation”. Luckily there was no alarm from the control center. “If the control center had given the alarm before I called, a whole team of mountain rescuers would have gone out,” he says angrily. So “only” he was tied and not ready for real emergencies. With a headlamp on the Innsbruck via ferrata Gregor Franke from the regional management of the Tyrolean mountain rescue service knows such unnecessary pseudo-emergencies that the emergency services are busy, especially in the summer months. “For example, there are mountaineers who climb the Innsbruck via ferrata at night with a headlamp,” he knows. “Half of Innsbruck sees the lights and sounds the alarm!”
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