A 26-year-old Basque mountaineer dies after falling down a slope in the Pyrenees

A young 26-year-old mountaineer, a native of Berastegi (Gipuzkoa), died this Saturday after falling through a cut of about 350 meters from the Aspe peak, in the Huesca Pyrenees. The Mountain Civil Guard rescued his body after receiving an alert about 1:50 p.m. that day from a group of people who reported that they had seen a person rush down a hillside and that they could not see the point where he had stopped.

The deceased, Fermín Caminos, was making the ascent to Aspe peak by his normal route on the north face with a group of friends with the intention of skiing down the south side of the mountain. The Civil Guard Command has reported that, apparently, the young man slipped when stepping on a sheet of ice and suffered the fatal fall. The Berastegi City Council, where he lived, has declared three days of mourning for his death.

The emergency teams deployed to the area in the helicopter flew over the area where the fall had occurred several times and were able to see the mountaineer lying at an altitude of about 2,200 meters. After executing the aircraft a complicated maneuver on the frozen ground, the rescue specialists approached the area and were able to verify that the body of the mountaineer, already lifeless, presented serious injuries.

The young athlete was making the ascent to Aspe with the help of an ice ax and crampons when, at one point, for reasons still undetermined, he fell down a slope of about 350 meters until rolling about 500 meters away.

The incident has caused a great commotion in his hometown. The mayor of Berastegi, Amaia Azkue, has affirmed that the young man “participated a lot in the activities of the town”, was a person “known, linked to the mountain, where he was a reference, happy and very active”. In statements to The Basque Journal, Azkue has assured that the death of the mountaineer “has been something very traumatic for everyone, especially for his friends and the neighbors of Berastegi”. Caminos, with studies in renewable energies, was an employee of the Irizar company (manufacturer of buses) in the electromobility section. He was a rower on the Zarautz and La Donostiarra boats and was a regular mountain racer.

The Huesca Civil Guard has launched a notice this Sunday to warn that the weather conditions of recent days, with rains and cold temperatures, have favored the snowy surface to present a very hard layer of ice that requires the use of suitable material to make trips through the Pyrenees.