A serious accident marred the first day of the year on the slopes of the Hintertux glacier in Tyrol. A 28-year-old Dutch skier lost her life, for whom rescue was useless.
The fatal accident – as reported by the online edition of the Austrian newspaper Tiroler Tageszeitung– it happened a few minutes after 10 in the morning. According to when reconstructed by rescuers, two couples of Dutch tourists were descending on the red slope of the Hintertux glacier ski area. At one point the skiers faced a particularly steep and icy section of the track: while the two men passed unscathed, the women were instead ruined on the slope, with a dynamic that at the moment would exclude a clash between the two.
The accident
The 28-year-old slipped about a hundred meters down the slope, broke through a safety net, was thrown about 20 meters through the air and crashed into a tree, suffering fatal injuries. Her friend, just a year younger, however, slipped over the edge of the slope without braking and fell into a rocky hollow. The woman sustained serious trauma and, after receiving first aid on the spot, she was transported to the Kufstein hospital by helicopter and subsequently transferred to the university hospital in Innsbruck, where she is now hospitalized. For the twenty-eight year old, on the other hand, there was nothing they could do: attempts to revive her were in vain due to the extremely violent impact against the tree.
The other two incidents
The Hintertux ski area yesterday had to record two other serious ski accidents, one of which was precisely where the fall that cost the life of the young Dutch tourist occurred. About half an hour after the fatal accident – the Tiroler Tageszeitung – a 55-year-old German woman slipped in the same spot and hit the rocks. She too suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to hospital.
Investigations are still underway to reconstruct the causes of both accidents. Around 2.20 pm, the emergency helicopter took off again over the Hintertux glacier. Indeed, a 56-year-old German skier fell on the red slope 5 and crashed into a sign positioned along the route: he sustained a serious eye injury.