Dressed for a walk Mountaineer rescued from the Matterhorn in low shoes
Two Vietnamese mountaineers had to be rescued from the Matterhorn in a rescue operation. They were only equipped with lightweight low shoes and thin trainers.
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- On Monday, two Vietnamese mountaineers found themselves in a dangerous situation on the Matterhorn.
- The rescue took 14 hours due to bad weather.
- The mountaineers were poorly equipped and hypothermic.
On Monday morning shortly after 7 a.m., the rescuers from Zermatt received an emergency call that two mountaineers from Vietnam were in distress on the Matterhorn. The rescue of the two took 14 hours due to extreme weather conditions.
The weather was so bad that it was not possible to rescue them from the air by land. At 1 pm, three rescue specialists from the Zermatt rescue station decided to climb the Matterhorn on foot to the scene of the accident.
Zermatt Bergbahnen was able to transport the rescuers to Schwarzsee, from where they had to continue on foot. They were exposed to snow, wind, ice, fog and cold. At over 3,500 meters, the rescue specialists finally discovered the two climbers in distress.
Rescuers abseil down to blocked climbers
They were blocked below the normal route in impassable terrain. Inadequately equipped with lightweight low shoes and thin trainers, the climbers were also severely hypothermic. Due to the adverse weather conditions, they could not be airlifted out of the Matterhorn wall at this time. The rescue specialists therefore had to abseil down to the injured alpinists and then bring them back to the normal route using a rope hoist.
This was followed by an extremely difficult descent to the winter camp of the Hörnlihütte. Once there, rescuers and climbers in distress were able to seek shelter. At the same time, Air Zermatt was on standby with a helicopter to evacuate the alpinists in the event of a weather window. At 2 a.m., the helicopter crew took off in the direction of the Matterhorn and was able to bring both the mountaineers in distress and the rescue specialists to safety in two flights.
Without the rescuers' efforts, the two Vietnamese climbers would hardly have survived the extreme conditions and would have frozen to death, wrote Air Zermatt.
