Bad Tölz: Winter balance of the mountain rescue service - 19 deaths happened while hiking

Created: 05/10/2022, 06:30

By: Daniel Wegscheider

A busy winter season for the Bavarian Mountain Rescue Service: Roland Ampenberger (Head of the Mountain Rescue Center) presented the figures.

© Wegscheider

County – After winter is before winter.

This is how the Bavarian Mountain Rescue Service took stock again this year of the past 2021/22 season.

It turned out that the number of accidents reached the levels of the times before the corona pandemic.

Particularly tragic: the number of fatally injured hikers and mountaineers was 19 people – higher than ever.

At the beginning of May, the last ski areas in the region closed, and the winter season is over.

Time for a look back at the Bergwacht Bayern on the number of operations covering the period from December 1, 2021 to the end of April 2022.

At the press conference last Friday in the Tölz Center for Safety and Training, Roland Ampenberger, spokesman for the Bavarian Mountain Rescue Service, presented these.

A total of 5,475 missions were managed by the voluntary mountain rescuers from Oberstdorf to Berchtesgaden and the Bavarian Forest up to the Röhn.

"Despite the sometimes low snow depths, winter sports were possible throughout in many places," reported Ampenberger.

Looking at the individual sports, most accidents happened in skiing and snowboarding, "which accounted for 60 percent of the incidents".

According to Ampenberger, these are mainly injuries to the body parts below the upper body.

In addition to skiing, tobogganing is probably a much more dangerous leisure activity than previously thought.

Compared to the two previous years, the number of injuries here rose to 235. Ampenberger explained that it is a sport that anyone can do without practice “and that on site, compared to cross-country skiing and ski touring”.

Klaus Schädler, Managing Director of the Bavarian Mountain Rescue Service, emphasized the 19 hikers and climbers who died in an accident as "extraordinarily high and tragic".

Dangers and consequences are often not recognized.

"The lightness of the digital world of images in the social media often suggests a ubiquitous availability of summit goals, regardless of all other factors and personal abilities," warned the deputy state manager of the Bavarian mountain rescue service, Jürgen Bummer.

Balance sheet avalanche warning service Bavaria: Four fatalities to mourn

Aerial view of the trigger zone of the slab avalanche in the steep north-west slope of the Hocheisspitze.

© Avalanche Warning Center Bavaria

Finally, an accident-prone winter season for the Bavarian Mountain Rescue Service is coming to an end.

In addition to the 19 hikers and mountaineers to complain about, the snow also claimed victims - four tourers lost their lives in an avalanche.

At the press conference, the Bavarian Avalanche Warning Service also took stock.

Winter 2021/22 from December to April was shaped differently.

"The season started mildly with a lot of wet snow and then from the end of January to the end of February it went into the hot phase", reported Christoph Hummel from the avalanche warning service.

"Wind is the master builder for avalanches"

Especially the stormy and rainy weather conditions in these months in combination with an unstable snow cover resulted in a dangerous mixture.

"They say wind is the master builder for avalanches."

And so, according to Hummel, there were numerous avalanche accidents in open ski areas during this time.

A total of 13 accidents involving people were reported to the avalanche warning center.

There were also four fatalities in the Bavarian Alps.

On the afternoon of January 22, 2022, the first avalanche accident occurred above the so-called hotel slope on the north side of the Wendelstein (Rosenheim district), in which a Czech citizen died.

The probable course of the accident was reconstructed by the police, there were no eyewitnesses.

Accordingly, he wore no snowshoes and carried no avalanche emergency equipment with him.

Based on the scene of the accident, the police assume that the casualty was hit by a small avalanche while crossing the snow-covered slope.

Avalanche accident on the Hocheisspitze:

The next avalanche accident happened three days later in Ramsau (Berchtesgadener Land) on the Hocheisspitze: Two ski tourers triggered a 150-metre-wide slab avalanche on the steep north-west slope 80 meters below the summit.

"One of the two was caught, carried away over the steep terrain and could only be recovered dead," reported Hummel.

Likewise, on February 5th of this year, two Austrian ski tourers in the Berchtesgaden Alps released a large slab avalanche on the summit slope of the Steintalhörnl at an altitude of around 2,250 meters and were swept away.

One of the two tourers was buried and could only be found dead.

The last tragic incident in the region occurred on April 14th when a young mountain hiker on the Karwendelsteig near Mittenwald was caught by a wet snow avalanche at 1,750 meters and almost 300 meters in altitude and was swept away.

At the end of his report, Hummel summed up the tragedy of the four people who died in avalanches: "None of them was a beginner or inexperienced."