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Rescue
by Gerhart
Drucker
Carl,
a skier, was found missing on the midway to the Trenkwiesenschlucht
run, and a group of rescue team was formed to search for him.
Did they find him? Was he still alive? Please read the following
story for the answer.
If
you look south by southwest from a high window in Vienna on
a perfectly clear day, you can see a white mountain in the
far distance, appropriately named Schneeberg (Snow Mountain).
Lots of people from Vienna roam there, on foot or on skis.
The energetic ones climb up in foot, while the more complacent
ones ride up on a cog railroad. In
winter and spring the skiers practically take over the mountain
and head in droves for the long and superb runs down to the
valley, of which the Trenkwiesenschlucht run is
the most popular. Its two steilstufen (steep steps) have made
many an excellent skier fall. On this run, the skier also
passes the cabins of several small
clubs. These were locked every time I came by. No place offered
shelter all the long way down the mountain.
On a cold Sunday in March, I skied the Trenkwiesenschlucht
with a small party. On a flat stretch between the steilstufen
I overtook a group of skiers, men and women, and overheard
shreds of their conversation.
A female voice: "Where is Carl? I
haven't
seen him for a long time."
A man: "I'm sure he's ahead;
he's such a good skier."
Another man: "I'm not so sure. I
haven't seen
him for a long time either, and I'm worried."
The first man: "Nothing to worry about;
I'm
sure he's ahead. You know how well he skies. He's
probably waiting for us now, at the bottom. Let's push on."
So they did, while I stopped and waited for
my group which soon arrived and together we skied to the upper
rim of the famous second steilstufe. All seemed happy and
relaxed, except the members of the group whose conversation
I had overheard, who were missing one man. I heard their frantic
shouts, "Carl! Carl!" and saw them scurrying around, looking
for him, in vain. Then they gathered near me, and I heard
one woman say, "Carl may have taken an earlier train from
Payerbach back to Vienna. Best
thing we can now do is return to Vienna as fast as possible
and telephone him."
At this point I considered it my duty to intervene.
I told them, "I know you folks are missing a man. I overheard
you talk about it some forty-five minutes earlier. I believe
he's behind, still on the mountain, injured, lost, or both."
One man interrupted: "But
Carl's an excellent
skier, the best of our group."
"An excellent skier can lose his way, or suffer
an injury, too," I said. "Night will fall soon, and it's getting
very cold. Your friend must be in great danger, or else he
would have come down long ago. You ought immediately to notify
the .
Then you should organize a rescue party of the best and hardiest
in your group. I volunteer to come along, only first I have
to say good-bye to my own group; they're all safely off the
mountain."
I
went back to my buddies, told them that I'd participate in
a mountain rescue, I asked them to notify my parents.
Returning to the other group, I said, "I believe there's a
local rescue team here in Payerbach."
My
words made a visible impression on them. The bearded
man named Fred said to his group, "He's right. Let's notify
the gendarmerie; let's hurry."
We separated. Fred
escorted his two shivering party members to a nearby inn while
I and the remaining two literally ran to the gendarmerie post.
Two men were on duty. Lt. Heilig, a slightly paunchy man in
his forties, listened carefully, asked a few questions, then
gave an order to his subaltern, a strapping young sergeant: "Hugo, notify the mountain
rescue." Turning to us, he added, "They're volunteers, all of them.
They'll be here soon." We
all thanked him. Soon Fred joined us.
"How late does the cog railroad
run?" I inquired.
"No more trains up tonight;
I'll have to request
a special train for the rescue; it won't be cheap," the lieutenant
replied.
Then the Payerbach-Reichenau voluntary mountain
rescue team walked in, each man carrying a full rucksack. After
introductions, a mood of cautious optimism prevailed when Sgt.
Hugo drove us in a small truck to the cog railroad station,
and when the station master agreed, for a stiff price, to take
the eight of us to the summit in a special run.
This ancient masterpiece of engineering takes its passengers
up steeply, in sweeping curves, nearly 5 000 vertical feet,
to the Summit Hotel. In
the small lobby we quickly organized the search, of which
Herbert, the head of the mountain rescue team, took charge,
while a few hotel guests looked on curiously. We all were
dressed for very cold weather. Everyone carried a flashlight;
Herbert also carried a burning torch.
Fred was certain he had last seen his lost buddy on the long
stretch between the first and second steilstufen. We reached
the top of the first steep step and began to shout with all
our strength; no answer. More unanswered shouts followed.
After looking in vain for stray tracks, we skied down the
difficult steep section.
At the bottom, after more shouts yielded no results, Herbert
divided us into three groups and assigned a different area
to each group to search. "Especially look for
tracks and follow them, but always stay within shouting distance
of this spot, and do not separate," he said. We also agreed
on a code of communication, by shouts or flashlight signals,
and promised to return to the main track within twenty minutes.
The eight of us reconvened, advanced about half a kilometer,
and repeated the search to both sides of the main track, in
vain. And so it went on and on, while the searchers' moods
gradually changed to gloom.
My watch showed two a.m. when, after two hours of ceaseless
search, we reached a level and widened spot of the main track,
from where, as I remembered, it was not far to the rim of
the famous, and challenging, second steilstufe. A wooden hut,
unlit and padlocked, was standing to our right. We stopped
there to rest and eat a snack.
Noting the look of disappointment on all faces, I said,
"Let's
consider the situation for one moment. Some of you think Carl
reached the bottom ahead of you and took an earlier train
to Vienna. That's very unlikely; no person with any sense
of responsibility would have done so. Next, Carl may have
suffered an injury on the run. I
don't believe this either, because the descent was teeming
with skiers yesterday and no doubt someone would have come
to his aid, and you would have been notified. I
believe Carl fell behind his party, reached this spot, and
decided to take a break, as most skiers do. Probably he had
to answer nature's call and, finding the hut locked, walked
away to seek privacy behind a tree. And afterwards he got
confused, walked in the wrong direction, and got lost. As
you see, quite a few solitary ski tracks diverge from here
in several directions. We must investigate all of them."
Herbert added, "But be very careful,
there's a fifty meter
dropoff not far from here, to the left. Stay strictly in the
track." He bid Lisbeth and me explore the tracks on the left,
and assigned other tracks to the others. The chemistry student
and I took off to the left, across a little clearing. How
peaceful the snowed-in world looked below the star-studded
sky; yet we had to push on. I took the lead. A thought shot
through my mind.
"Lisbeth, is Carl a daredevil?"
"Yes, very much so."
"Then I have a new theory about what happened. Expert skiers
often look for more challenging routes than those the average
skier takes."
"You mean Carl fell off the cliff Herbert told us
about?"
"Perhaps. Let's see where this track takes us. Carl
wouldn't
have had to veer that far to answer nature's call."
We pushed ahead, at times having to duck under more snowbent
branches.
"If one of these boughs fell on a skier's head, it could
kill him," Lisbeth suggested. "Or her," I added with a grin.
We had stepped into a clearing. There were unmistakable signs
of a skier having turned around; our track ended abruptly.
Ahead of us lay utter blackness, and my flashlight caught
a horizontal line where snow met sky, barely five meters in
front of me.
"Stop, Lisbeth!" I yelled, "we're on a
!"
I did a hasty kick turn and hurried back to my partner.
"That was a close call. A few steps farther and
I'd have
fallen down the cliff."
"I'm sure that's exactly what happened to poor
Carl," the
woman said.
"I don't think so. See his turnaround marks? His track
doesn't
continue to the edge, and look here!" I pointed with my flashlight.
"There's a different track back, in the direction of the Kraxelbuam
house. We must follow it."
We started out, flashlights in hand. Lisbeth followed me
closely along the new track toward the flat rock, next to
which something was sticking out of the snow. Coming close,
I became aware that the rock wasn't a rock at all. It was
a man!
"Carl!" We both exclaimed at the same instant. He was lying
in the snow motionless. One of his skis was sticking out.
We both rushed to him. His body felt cold, I couldn't feel
his pulse, he was just barely breathing, but thank God, his
pupils were constricted. He was still alive, but his life
was ebbing away. I also noticed a one inch laceration of his
scalp, surrounded by blood-caked hair, and a deformity of
his left leg. The scalp wound wasn't actively bleeding. Lisbeth
wanted to dress it immediately, but I told her, "That comes
later. Do you know mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?"
"Yes."
"Then start it at once while
I'm splinting
his broken leg."
That's what we did. Lisbeth did a good job with mouth-to-mouth
artificial respiration, while I splinted Carl's left leg with
his ski poles, which I tied in place with an ace bandage.
Of course, I took his ski off first. In doing so, I noted
that he'd caught the tip of his left ski in a snare, from
which I extracted it with some difficulty. Next, I tied both
Carl's legs together. Then we slipped a blanket under him
and worked a heavy sweater over him. I took over the mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation and told my partner to give the agreed upon
signal for "Found Alive," five long shouts at five second
intervals, or five big circles with the flashlight. If Herbert
didn't hear the shouts, he would see the light flashes in
the tops of the trees. I re-warmed Carl's hands against my
chest. He
was now breathing on his own and had a palpable, though rapid,
pulse.
Barely twenty minutes after we had given the signal, a string
of three flashlights advanced toward us, three of the four
mountain rescuers. Lisbeth was dressing the scalp wound when
they arrived. Only then did I pay attention to the huge and
recently broken-off bough lying in the snow near Carl.
"Our main problem now is hypothermia," Herbert said.
"We
must get him to a warm place as quickly as possible."
His colleagues, with incredible speed, had already assembled
their stretcher. We loaded Carl onto it, tied him in place,
and off we went, following the track toward the Kraxelbuam
hut. We were five for four carrier positions; therefore, we
could take turns. We carried the litter in a wide semicircle
around the spot where I had come close to the dropoff.
Carrying the stretcher to the hut wasn't overly difficult.
While it was my turn to be idle, I told my friends how I figured
the accident had happened.
"Carl fell behind for some reason, but believed he was ahead.
Probably he waited here, in front of this hut. When the others
didn't come, he decided to ski the second steilstufe alone,
but seeing the mass of skiers going the regular route there,
he went to look for a more challenging descent. Lisbeth told
me he was a daredevil!"
"As if the regular way were not challenging
enough," Herbert
said.
"True," I said. "Carl came to the spot close to the cornice,
got worried, and chose to return to this hut, to ski the usual
route, like everybody else. Suddenly he caught his left ski
in a snare, and while he was trying hastily to get his ski
free, a big, snow-laden bough broke off directly above him,
hit his head and knocked him unconscious. Carl fell toward
his right, his left leg couldn't follow, that's why he broke
it. If we hadn't found him, he'd soon have died of shock and
hypothermia."
A happy surprise greeted us at the hut. Its door was unlocked,
and the two men had a fire going in the kitchen stove! They
had found the key under the garbage can, and also old newspaper,
wood, and matches in the kitchen. We warmed plates and applied
them to Carl's skin, and kept doing it till, half an hour
later, he awoke. Afterwards we fed him lots of warm lemonade
and hot tea; gradually he warmed up. We had won!
It was two and one-half hours to dawn.
Carl's breathing and
pulse at the neck, wrists, and feet required constant attention.
He was famished; we fed him broth made from dried soup found
on a kitchen shelf, and chocolate plus candy from our trail
lunches.
Carl recovered smoothly; his broken leg healed in excellent
position. For awhile his doctors worried that they might have
to amputate his left leg below the knee because of severe
frostbite of the foot, but in the end Carl lost only three
toes, a small price for coming out alive. He now skies as
well as before, but has become more cautious. His parents'
happiness and continued gratitude strengthened my resolve
to study medicine and save lives.
(2 329 words)
(From Short Story International )
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