Two men injured

Another serious accident with a snowmobile

The skidoo landed in the forest.(Bild: zoom.tirol)

Just last weekend, an accident involving a snowmobile ended fatally for a 37-year-old Tyrolean in Salzburg's Pinzgau region. On Saturday night, there was another serious skidoo accident in the Tyrolean Zillertal. Two men were seriously injured.

The accident occurred at around 2.45 a.m. in the middle of the night in the "Gerlosstein" ski area. Two Germans (43 and 44 years old) intended to drive their skidoo over a slope to their vacation hut near the top station of the gondola lift.

After the driver had apparently tried several times to overcome a steep slope without success, he drove back down the slope. "In doing so, the snowmobile came back onto the toboggan run below, where the driver probably lost control of the vehicle and overshot the toboggan run," said the police.

After around ten meters, the vehicle crashed into a tree, overturned and the two men were thrown into the forest, where they lay seriously injured.

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Emergency services brought to the mountain by skidoo and gondola
One of the two injured people finally managed to contact a friend, who in turn informed a snow groomer driver. The latter arrived at the scene of the accident a short time later and set the rescue chain in motion. "Together with Gerlos Mountain Rescue, we took the gondola up the mountain and made our way to the accident site from there," explains head of operations Gerhard Daum from Zell am Ziller Mountain Rescue. "We used a rope rescue to get the injured skiers onto the piste. They were transported down to the valley by gondola and handed over to the rescue team." The special thing for the mountain rescuers was that two people had to be rescued. "Normally, we only have to deal with one patient. It's usually tobogganers who have had accidents," says Daum.

The two men were taken by ambulance to hospital in Schwaz and Innsbruck with serious head injuries.

Ten members of the Zell am Ziller mountain rescue team, six colleagues from Gerlos, two ambulances, an emergency doctor, the police and cable car staff were involved in the operation, which lasted until around 5.30 am.