The Salzburg flight police discovered a dead climber
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The crew of the Salzburg police helicopter “Libelle” discovered the body of the 24-year-old mountaineer from Lower Saxony on the Hochkalter, which is owned by Bavaria. This one has been missing since September. The helicopter treats itself routinely on the return flight from Pinzgau over the Berchtesgaden Alps to Salzburg Airport.
In September, the Bavarian forces had tried in vain to find the missing person in several large search operations. Now there has been routine success in the effort — by police officers from the neighboring country.
Crews of Austrian police helicopters fly over the Hochkalter area in Bavaria, near the border, more or less regularly when they are alerted to operations on their own territory in Salzburg’s Pinzgau or Pongau. In the past three weeks, it has become a kind of routine for her to keep an eye out for the missing German on flights home. On Thursday, too, a Salzburg crew deviated a little directly from the route to Salzburg Airport, where the base of operations is located.
Deceased lay much further down
The pilot and the mountain guide of the alpine police discovered the dead man on Thursday afternoon at 2,250 meters above sea level on the southwest side of the Hochkalter – on a snow field in a steep gully. The place is more than 200 meters below the spot where German emergency services found the backpack with the young man’s notebook on September 21. The warm weather of the last few days thawed away the fresh autumn snow of the last few weeks. Because of this mass of snow, the Bavarian teams had to stop their search operations in September.
Here are some pictures from back then:
German police take over transport
The Austrian crew reported the find to their Bavarian colleagues during the flight home. A little later, the team of the Bavarian police helicopter “Edelweiß 2” from Munich brought two mountain guides from the German Alpine Police to the deceased. He was taken on board with the help of the steel cable winch and flown into the valley. Investigations into the cause of death are still ongoing. Third-party negligence is excluded. The 24-year-old had phoned before he disappeared that he was injured and got lost in the snowstorm. Experts assume that he may have frozen to death.