It is cold and foggy on Saturday evening at the mountain station. © Bayerische Zugspitzbahn (Bavarian Zugspitz Railway)
Eight Indian citizens set off on Saturday at 6 a.m. to the summit of the Wank - at 1 a.m. they had to be rescued by mountain rescue and BZB employees. Problem: The shelter in the Wankhaus was locked.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen – That could have ended badly: On Sunday night, eight Indian citizens may have lost their way on the. On Saturday at 6 o'clock in the morning they had set off in the direction of Partenkirchen's local mountain. At 1 o'clock at night, they had to be brought down to the valley by the mountain rescue service, completely hypothermic. What happened in between, the police can not say exactly so far. She is currently investigating – because it is also about the question of why the shelter of the DAV hut Wankhaus was not open.
Equipment was actually non-existent, to say the least. The eight hikers from India had only one and a half liters of water with them, police spokesman Paul Klette said. Where the men were on the road between the start of the tour and the emergency call – there are a whopping 18 hours in between – or what they did, the officials are now checking. According to the police, they wanted to seek shelter in the Wankhaus around 21:30 p.m. in bad weather and temperatures close to zero degrees – but stood in front of closed doors. "We slept, I didn't hear anything," says hut keeper Max Gröbl when asked by the Tagblatt. Even in the hours before, he had not noticed any group around the Wankhaus.
Wankhaus closed until 1 June - here come the new tenants
He only woke up when a mountain rescue comrade with a headlamp stood on his terrace around midnight. The hut is currently in no way suitable for an overnight stay, says Gröbl. The reason: On June 1, i.e. in about two weeks, the lease expires and new landlords arrive. "We've cleared everything out, there are no beds, there's nothing left in it. You can't spend the night there anymore." He doesn't open the house until 1 June. Until the new tenants arrive.
Because the Indians in distress no longer knew how to help themselves, they made the emergency call around midnight. In the event of emergencies, there is a direct agreement between the Garmisch-Partenkirchen mountain rescue service and the technical management of the Bavarian Zugspitzbahn, explains Verena Tanzer, spokeswoman for the mountain railway company. Karl Dirnhofer, Technical Director, discussed the situation with the mountain rescuers, whether a rescue with the support of the railway was possible and at all sensible.
Employees of the Bayerische Zugspitzbahn put the Wankbahn into operation for rescuers - in the middle of the night
In this case, the actors had no other choice. The eight hypothermia patients had to be fetched, but the mountain station cannot be reached by car. So Dirnhofer and his colleagues drove an off-road vehicle to the middle station, where the drive of the Wankbahn is located. One person had to stay there to control the track, the other drove up to the summit with two mountain rescue comrades. Five cabins were used for the transport in order to finally be able to transport the eight people down into the valley. With a transport vehicle of the mountain rescue service, the men arrived in the valley around 1 o'clock in the morning.
Now the police are investigating the exact course of the wrong path, especially since according to reports, a complaint against the hut owner for failure to provide assistance is in the room. However, there is no legal entitlement to an open shelter in the Wankhaus, explains Thomas Bucher, press spokesman for the German Alpine Club. The Wankhaus belongs to category 2. Means: A simple, seasonally hosted hut for mountaineers and experienced alpine hikers with emergency and shelter. "But it has a special position because it is located in the immediate vicinity of the mountain station," explains Bucher. Thus, there is no "special mountaineering interest" at the Wankhaus that obliges a shelter. Only category 1 accommodations have to show this: bivouacs that have to be open in remote places in alpine terrain - such as on the anniversary ridge in the Wetterstein.
