Drama in the mountains – Steirer falls 800 meters and survives

When the Styrian alpine police officer Heimo Kohlbacher starts a mountain tour with a friend on the morning of 9 May 2016 from Graz in the direction of Sonnblick (Rauris in Salzburg), he has no idea that this day will change his life. The goal of the experienced mountaineering duo is an exploration of a rocky bottleneck in a snow channel at about 2700 meters above sea level.

Well equipped and the best weather
In great shape, the two will start at 7.30 am in fantastic weather from the Kolm Saigurn mountain hut at 1600 meters altitude. With touring skis you can make quick progress on the fresh snow cover. You can climb about 1,100 meters in just under four hours. They reach their destination around 11:30 am. The skis are swapped out for picks and crampons, which the duo uses to scale the steep wall up to 45 degrees.

A weighty decision
But then Kohlbacher makes an important decision. The original plan to leave again after overcoming the rocky bottleneck and ending the tour the next day is rejected. Instead, Kohlbacher suggests climbing further up the extremely steep, snow-covered gully to the glacial plateau.

“It was probably the pressure I put on myself to finish the trek on the same day because I feared the weather would worsen the next day.” His colleague agrees and the duo tackles the last 150 meters.

Suddenly there is fog
His comrade climbs forward when fog suddenly descends, radically reducing visibility. He manages to climb the glacier plateau first and Kohlbacher tries to do the same. His head was already over the edge of the glacier when, on the last step, one of the touring skis attached to the backpack got stuck in the snowdrift.

“I can’t fall here!”
“I’ve practiced such a situation a hundred times during training: you can free yourself by shifting your weight from one foot to the other.” But the snow under Kohlbacher’s mountain shoe gives way – he steps into the void. “I can’t fall here, not here,” he thought in panic as he lost his balance. Before the eyes of its horrified comrade, the Steiermarker falls backwards into the 50-degree sheer wall, hits the hard blanket of snow and rolls over several times.

Instinctively, he is still trying to build up body tension to slow the fall. Vain. Only the skis attached to the backpack slow down the fall, but already after a few meters the strap tears from the backpack.

Kohlbacher now races uncontrollably at more than 100 kilometers per hour towards the rocky bottleneck. “My last hope was the crampons. If you manage to hit them in the hard snow, probably both legs will be broken, but at least I’ll be seriously injured and eventually found,” he recalls his train of thought.

With his head on the frozen blanket of snow
In desperation, he rams the crampons into the frozen snow and is catapulted into the air. His legs buckle, he flies in a high arc over the bottleneck and lands with his head on the frozen blanket of snow.

Later he will learn that he has broken a vertebra. His brain is spinning, thoughts of a colleague who died in an accident, haunt his head. To Kohlbacher, they’re like a near-death experience: “I just waited for my life to be over.”

Thoughts are with daughter Valentina
But his martyrdom is not over, the fall continues. Chunks of ice scratch his face, the pain getting worse. Thoughts are attached to his four-year-old daughter Valentina. “Who’ll be watching her when I’m gone?” he wonders.

It is this idea that mobilizes his last energy reserves – and thus he succeeds in the almost impossible: he manages to brake the fall, almost comes to a stop. However, the budding hope is suddenly destroyed – by a subsequent wet avalanche. But instead of devouring him, she pushes him a hundred yards toward a crevice. This time Kohlbacher is lucky. It comes to a stop in a groove just a few meters before the fissure, the avalanche shoots past him to the right. Only now does his terror subside – after 800 meters.

Even made the emergency call myself
Seriously injured, Kohlbacher still manages to call the state control center on his cell phone. The operator is confused. He assumes that the mountaineer who had already reported the accident will call again. He can’t believe the victim himself is on the phone.

At that moment, Kohlbacher’s new life began: he was rescued, flown by the helicopter crew Martin 1 to the LKH Salzburg and given first aid there. Four operations and many months of rehabilitation followed. He can only return to police work after a year. He now works as a spokesman for the National Police.