A 26-year-old German snowboarder had to spend more than two hours in a snow hole in the Resterhöhe/Pass Thurn ski area near Mittersill (Salzburg) on Monday. The drunken man was missed by acquaintances. The mountain rescue team found him after a difficult search off-piste.
He couldn’t go forward or back: On Monday afternoon, the 26-year-old was stuck so deep in the snow off the piste near Mittersill that he could no longer free himself. Because acquaintances missed him shortly before 5 p.m., they called the mountain rescue service for help.Snowboarder caused a large-scale operation. More than 40 mountain rescuers from Salzburg and Tyrol as well as three dog handlers and three alpine police officers were deployed in a large-scale search operation. The Pinzgau disaster officer and mountain railway employees also took part with skidoos and snow groomers.Adverse weather conditionsThe search was made more difficult not only by the steep slope, but above all by adverse weather conditions with heavy snowfall and in the dark. Drones or helicopters could therefore not fly.Located in the dark via WhatsAppThe emergency services managed to reach the man on his cell phone. But he couldn’t say where exactly he was stuck, nor could he locate it. The emergency services split up and searched in different directions. Finally, the Alpine police received the man’s location via WhatsApp. The man was stuck in open terrain between the Hangalm lift and the Hartkaser lift. When the mountain rescue team reached the German, he was already severely hypothermic. The man was stuck in the hole in the snow for more than two hours. The mountain rescue team brought him to the slopes with a mountain stretcher and transported him into the valley with a snow groomer. His friends were already waiting for him there. According to mountain rescue, he was drunk and off-piste.
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