In an accident involving a material cable car in Austria, two hut employees from Nepal got stuck at a dizzying height. The mountain rescue team had to be called out.
Neukirchen am Großvenediger – The Großvenediger (3657 meters) is the second highest peak in the Hohe Tauern in Austria after the Großglockner and towers so majestically over the high mountains that its characteristic pyramid peaks can be seen far into the lowlands – provided there is a view of the mountains. However, many mountain lovers prefer to see it up close and climb the peaks themselves.
Mountain hut in Austria is a popular stopover for tours in the Hohe Tauern
Because these are long tours, there are mountain huts like the Kürsinger Hut of the Austrian Alpine Club, which is 2558 meters high and is located on the northern slope of the Großvenediger. The season there normally runs until the end of September or beginning of October. But because of the severe onset of winter, the team closed the hut on Sunday (September 15). “Due to the heavy snowfall forecast for the whole week, we are under pressure to leave the hut now in order to get safely down to the valley with all our equipment,” the operators wrote on the hut’s website.
The mountain lodge, which has 150 beds, was hastily made winter-proof. The team went down into the valley. Among them were two employees from Nepal who wanted to get down to the valley as quickly as possible on Saturday afternoon. Staff from Nepal are in demand in the Alps, as people from the Himalayan country know the mountains very well. The descent into the valley was already waist-deep in snow, which is why the two tried to get down to the valley using the material cable car, which is usually used to transport food, drinks and small items of equipment up the mountain. The valley station is at an altitude of around 1,935 meters.
Suddenly the cable car got stuck – the two men were in a precarious situation
The two Nepalese were about 400 meters from the cable car valley station of the hut on Saturday afternoon when the material cable car got stuck at a height of about 30 meters. “The rescue was a challenge due to the weather,” said Albert Kogler, the local head of the Neukirchen mountain rescue service and on-site operations manager. Kohler continued: “After the alarm was raised at 3 p.m., we first had to fight our way through the deep snow. But fortunately it was a location where we had a rescue option at all.”
The mountain rescue team reported that the cable of the material cableway probably came loose due to the strong wind. The rescue of the passengers in distress took almost four hours, but everything turned out well. “The two Nepalese were naturally a little hypothermic when we were finally able to free them.”
“It could have ended worse”: Lift incident ends well
The operation ended at 10 p.m. “The whole thing could have ended worse,” Maria Riedler, spokeswoman for the Salzburg Mountain Rescue Service, told IPPEN.MEDIA Riedler was unable to say who operated the material cable car and from where. On Sunday, the hut team posted sunny pictures of the hut at Facebook and added: “We have all made it safely to the valley.”
In northern Italy, a woman was swept away by a cable car in July and fell to her death. The onset of winter had claimed lives elsewhere in the Alps. This weekend, a woman froze to death on a mountain hike in the Dolomites. In the Karwendel (Tyrol), a man from Coburg was buried by an avalanche; there is little hope that he survived. Last week, four mountain climbers froze to death on Mont Blanc, and eight mountain climbers fell to their deaths from a cornice on Monte Rosa.
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