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Swiss Alpine forests: not suitable for drunken walks in winter (view from Aigle)

Villars-sur-Ollon, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A rescue team at 06:20 Wednesday morning 17 February found a man in his early twenties on an extremely steep slope below the ice rink in Villars-sur-Ollon. He had lost his shoes and was not wearing a coat when he was found nearly four hours after he went missing during a night of visiting bars with a group of friends. The friends of the young man, who is from Vaud, phoned emergency number 117 when they realized he was missing, and made it clear that he had had too much to drink. A sizable rescue operation got underway: four people from the local mountain rescue service, three area police patrols, a dog rescue team, an ambulance and a helicopter were called out.

He was walking in 50 to 60cm of snow when he was found near a stream that he had been following.

Vaud police say he was very lucky that temperatures were relatively mild, just below freezing. He was suffering from hypothermia when found in a nearly inaccessible wooded area, thanks to one of the dogs finding a shoe. He was lifted out by helicopter, then treated by the ambulance crew before being flown by helicopter to the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne.

The helicopter had to make several trips to lift out the rescue team, given the extreme difficulty of the terrain.