VAL SIGNALS. He had remained clinging to a rock after slipping about forty meters down an icy cliff at 3,200 meters above sea level. Below him, the void.
The misadventure of a 23-year-old German man at the mountain station of the Grawand cable car in Schnals had a happy ending. The young man, who went up the lift around 4pm to enjoy a day on the snow with his snowboard, remained unharmed, but the fear and tension he experienced, at a certain point, had skyrocketed and, once the nightmare had dispelled , he knelt down, abandoning himself to a liberating cry, embracing and thanking the men of the Ski Detachment of the State Police who had saved his life.
“The agents – the operators of the Bolzano Police Headquarters tell the facts – had been alerted by the staff of the Grawand cable car facility as a young man had slipped into the rocky and icy cliff under the upstream arrival of the cable car (under the Glacier hotel Grawand , ed.). The young German shouted that he was unharmed, but complained that he was very cold and scared.”
The Alpine Rescue Service was also alerted and an air ambulance was requested, but the passing of minutes did not facilitate the rescue, on the contrary. A snowfall had begun, temperatures had plummeted to minus 17 degrees, the wind was increasing and darkness was imminent in an increasingly worrying situation. And the rock to which the young man was clinging had stopped his slide (which miraculously occurred without impact), but kept him suspended over a drop of several metres, with a risk of falling “which would have had much more tragic consequences”.
At this point, the police and other rescuers decided to intervene by preparing a recovery with ropes, harnesses and carabiners. The service chief lowered himself into the cliff until he reached the 23-year-old, and then secured him with a second harness and gave the signal for the recovery of both to begin “by hand” by policemen aided by the plant managers.
Once brought back to safety, the young man explained that, having reached the mountain with the cable car, when it was time to start the descent, the snowboard had slipped towards the slope, carried away by the strong wind and had got stuck between rocks and ice. He then ventured down the steep slope to try to retrieve it, but slipped on the ice for about 40 meters, clinging in extremis to a rock.
“The intervention of the State Police rescuers, carried out in adverse environmental and meteorological conditions, was providential in avoiding much more tragic consequences – underlined the police commissioner Paolo Sartori – For this reason, my unconditional applause goes to these policemen for their courage and the very high professionalism they demonstrated in this situation, qualities that made it possible to save the life of a young tourist.” BP