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The fog drafts through the valley's of the Alp mountains, pictured from the 1.838 meters high Wendelstein mountain near the Bavarian village Bayrischzell, southern Germany, on Feb. 8, 2012. (Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images)
A 70-year-old German hiker was wet and exhausted after surviving six days in a snowy crevasse on a mountain in the Austrian Alps. He had only a bar of chocolate and one piece of bread in his backpack.
The man, known only as Manfred W. from Bavaria, was taken to a hospital in Innsbruck after he spent most of a week trapped in a 66-foot-deep hole in a glacier near the Laengentaler Weisskogel peak in western Austria, the International Business Times reported.
“He had a lot of training behind him, he was very well equipped and was able to organize himself well in the situation,” said Volker Wenzel, a doctor with the hospital, according to the Austrian Independent.
“He waited patiently, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing. He knew if he went off to sleep he may never wake up.”
He ate one square of chocolate per day and drank glacier water, saying that he never gave up hope to see his family again, the newspaper reported.
Other hikers are said to have heard his shouts and went for help, Sky News reported.
Franz Santer, with a mountain rescue team, told the publication that “we got the man out of the crevasse with a rope pulley” after he fell between 30 to 50 feet into the crevasse. “In the crevasse it is a bit warmer than above the ground,” he added.
Wenzel told the IB Times that the first item he asked for when he was admitted was a small beer.
“He said in his conditions a full one was too much,” Wenzel said. “I have never experienced something like this in 15 years of service.”
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