A team of Argentine rescuers, who set out in search of two French climbers who were in difficulty in the area of the Andean volcano Ojos del Salado, announced that they had found them unharmed on Tuesday, December 28.
The mountaineers who had undertaken its ascent had sent a satellite distress signal and a team of high-mountain rescuers had been in working order as of Sunday afternoon.
The help was on Sunday evening at some 5,500 m altitude, where they had set up a temporary camp, before the resumption of searches in the early hours of Monday. These were to resume against a background of “difficult climatic conditions, with heavy rains and hailstorms in high mountains”, according to a statement from the police of the province of Catamarca (north-west), on the night of Sunday to Monday. .
And the two French were discovered Monday at about 5,600 m above sea level, a little higher than the temporary camp. They present “logical health problems (dehydration) given the difficult context they had to face, but without major risks to their integrity,” said the Ministry of Security of the Province of Catamarca on its Facebook account. They were transferred to an intermediate base camp at Cortaderas (about 3,300 m above sea level) and were to arrive overnight in Fiambala (1,500 m) where “they will receive all the necessary attention”, according to the provincial ministry and defense. civil.
One of the three climbers had turned around
Rescuers were also able to establish that the group of French people initially consisted of three men, one of whom turned around for problems of acclimatization to the altitude, while the other two continued the ascent. The climber who came down was “in good health”, according to the Argentinian police.
According to local media, the French climbers arrived last week in Fiambala, 1,357 km northwest of Buenos Aires.
They had to undertake the ascent of the snow-capped peak of Ojos de Salado, considered the highest volcano in the world on the border of Chile and Argentina, by the so-called Quebrada de Quemadito route, at an altitude of 3,400 m, which requires at least ten days of hiking.
