The rock face from which five elite soldiers were to abseil Thursday afternoon was 40 meters high. For the members of the Special Forces Command of the German Armed Forces, this is more of a routine than a challenge. They had come to the Tyrolean Kaisergebirge to be trained as an army mountain guide. At the Stripsenjoch – a pass that marks the transition from the Zahmen to the Wilder Kaiser – the exercises went according to plan.
A soldier had successfully abseiled and had already reached the starting point via a path. Then it was the turn of a 30-year-old professional soldier. He had no problems either. He untied himself from the rope to march back to his colleagues. But he never got there.
Buried three meters deep
Because suddenly there was a crash in the Kaiser Mountains. For the soldier’s four colleagues, it was a “loud, dull noise” that they heard above the rock face. Contact with the 30-year-old was broken, he did not respond to the calls of his comrades. Two mountain guides finally descended to the foot of the wall and saw an avalanche of debris that had apparently buried the 30-year-old.
The search on the surface was in vain, and a major rescue operation was launched.
“Our two search dogs Lilly and Lino then located the climber under the layer of rubble,” says Richard Pali from the St. Johann Mountain Rescue Service. Although the animals struck, a rescue was still impossible: the demolition site was still extremely dangerous. Boulders and loose rock could have come loose at any time. The 30-year-old was buried two to three meters deep under the rocks. According to the Tyrolean state geologist, around 50 cubic meters of rock broke out of the wall at the Stripsenjoch.
corpse flew into the valley
A little later, the Alpine Police and the Armed Forces planned another rescue attempt, which turned out to be difficult yesterday due to the inaccessible accident site. Mountain rescue and the Kufstein fire brigade also took part. The emergency services were finally able to locate the missing person, but unfortunately, as expected, the help came too late. The body has already been flown into the valley.
The comrades of the soldier who died in the accident – all are stationed in Calw in Baden-Württemberg – were looked after by the crisis intervention team.
Source: Nachrichten
