A mountaineer became pinned in a glacier crevasse on Monday, August 24, after a fall dislodged a roughly 200-kilogram (440-pound) boulder. While the creavasse was not very deep, the massive rock slab trapped his leg, triggering a three-hour, multi-agency rescue on Austria’s Sulzenauferner glacier in the Stubai Alps.
The accident happened beneath the Zuckerhüttl, the highest peak in the Stubai Alps at 3,507 meters (11,506 feet). The German man had set out from the Hildesheimer Hütte with two companions on an alpine tour to the summit of the Pfaffenschneide at 3,366 meter (11,043 feet). While descending toward the Sulzenauferner, he crossed a short, unroped stretch of glacier at roughly a 30 to 35 degree pitch, lost his footing, and slid about 8 meters (26 feet) downhill before falling into a crevasse around 2 meters (7 feet) deep. As he slid, he dislodged a large rock slab, which followed him into the crevasse and pinned his lower leg.
His two companions immediately called for help and rappelled down to reach him themselves, before professional rescuers arrived.
The Neustift Fire Department was alerted at approximately 3:15 p.m. Along with the fire department, dispatch immediately called out Neustift Mountain Rescue, an emergency medical helicopter, and the Tyrol police helicopter Libelle Tirol. Two Neustift firefighters and one member of Neustift Mountain Rescue were flown toward the accident site with technical rescue equipment. The emergency helicopter Martin 8 had already reached the scene and begun treating the injured man.
The terrain was too difficult for a direct landing at the accident site, so Libelle Tirol dropped the rescue team at the nearest workable location, and the crew hiked the rest of the way in. By the time they arrived, the Martin 8 crew had already rigged a pulley system to help move the rock. Combined with a battery-powered hydraulic rescue tool the firefighters carried in, the team was able to shift the roughly 200-kilogram slab and free the man within a short time.
Once freed, he was flown by Martin 8 to a nearby landing site for further treatment before being taken to the hospital in Hall in Tirol with abrasions to his head and an injury to his lower leg. His two companions, uninjured, were flown by police helicopter to the Hildesheimer Hütte.
Afterward, the Neustift crew still had to break down and carry all of their rescue equipment back across the difficult terrain to a landing zone, coordinating additional shuttle flights through a staging site in nearby Falbeson before Libelle Tirol flew the crew and gear back down to the valley. The Neustift Fire Department’s operation wrapped up around 6:15 p.m., roughly three hours after the initial call.
The Sulzenauferner sits in the Stubai Valley (Stubaital), which is home to the Stubai Glacier ski resort. However, the Sulzenauferner is a separate, non-lift-served glacier reached on foot from mountain huts like the Sulzenauhütte and Hildesheimer Hütte, used for ski touring and alpine climbing rather than lift-served skiing. Neustift im Stubaital, the main base village for the valley, is about a 20-minute drive from Innsbruck.
The Neustift Fire Department shared the story and images of this impressive multi-agency rescue on its website and thanked all participating rescue agencies for their cooperation and wished the injured mountaineer a fast recovery.
