99 students and eight teachers from Germany were rescued from mountain distress by helicopter on Tuesday in Kleinwalsertal. The teachers had selected a hiking route from the Internet that corresponded neither to the clothing and footwear of the youth group nor to their mountain experience, the Vorarlberg police said on Wednesday night.
According to this, the group of 12-14-year-olds from Ludwigshafen together with their teachers set off from Schöntal in Hirschegg/Kleinwalsertal to the Walmendingerhorn in Mittelberg at around 3 p.m. The tour, which was not signposted, led over the narrow Heuberggrat, which, according to the police, “requires a head for heights, sure-footedness and experience in alpine terrain”. The trail was also wet and slippery due to the previous rainfall. When a sub-group decided to turn back due to the difficult conditions, two students slipped and suffered minor injuries. As a result, individual children panicked, which is why a teacher made an emergency call.
The entire group was rescued by helicopter and then taken to the shelter by mountain rescue and fire brigade vehicles. “Several students were exhausted, hypothermic, soaked and completely distraught,” the police describe the situation. The case will be forwarded to the public prosecutor’s office in Feldkirch for criminal assessment after the conclusion of the investigation, it said.
The teachers had apparently decided to take the ridge route based on a user’s description on the mountaineering website Hikr.org. This describes the tour over the Heuberggrat as a “great after-work tour”, as the police also quoted in their broadcast. Despite the signposted warning to continue only with climbing equipment, the path is completely harmless (“nothing difficult here”), said the user “Andy84”. Other hikers, on the other hand, had significantly more difficulties on the route: “It was the most demanding climb that we have done so far,” wrote “ju_wi” after an inspection in wet conditions.
Source: Nachrichten
