A 28-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman, both from Heiligenblut, went on a mountain tour in the Glockner area on Friday. The two walked from the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Höhe towards Wasserfallwinkel and over the Gamsgrubenscharte to the 3,331 meter high Fuscher-Kar-Head in Heiligenblut. After a rest of around an hour at the summit, the two alpinist friends descended again via the same high alpine route.
The accident happened around 12 p.m. According to police, the 19-year-old mountaineer, who was walking directly behind the man, may have slipped on the exposed alpine path shortly after the summit. In this area, the depths go down to the left and right of the ridge. The young woman fell around 100 meters over partly vertical, rocky terrain on the Carinthian side. “It’s a fall area, you’re not allowed to stumble or slip,” a mountain rescuer told the Kleine Zeitung. Although this route is often used, accidents rarely occur.
The Upper Carinthian woman sustained fatal injuries in the fall. Her mountain comrade immediately made an emergency call using his cell phone. The emergency doctor who arrived from the Christophorus 7 rescue helicopter could only determine that the woman was dead at the scene of the accident. The body of the injured mountaineer was recovered using a rope by the police helicopter from the Innsbruck air operations center and flown to Heiligenblut.