The two climbers left Zermatt early on Wednesday morning, as the Valais cantonal police reported on Friday. They reportedly wanted to climb the 4,478-metre Matterhorn via the Hörnli ridge.
As the two did not return as planned to their starting point after their tour, third parties alerted Air Zermatt via the Valais cantonal rescue organisation.
During a reconnaissance flight by Air Zermatt, emergency services located two lifeless bodies on the north face of the Matterhorn, according to a press release. The two climbers had fallen more than 1,000 metres into the depths for reasons as yet unexplained. The formal identification of the victims is currently underway.
The public prosecutor’s office has initiated an investigation in collaboration with cantonal police.Translated from German by Deep
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.
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, theo Vietnamese climbers would hardly have survived the extreme conditions and would have frozen to death, wrote Air Zermatt.
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