Four days after his emergency call, mountain rescuers found the backpack of the mountaineer who had an accident in the Berchtesgaden Alps. A spokesman for the mountain rescue service said this on Wednesday afternoon to the German Press Agency.

However, because the area of ​​operation was then again surrounded by clouds, no further mountain rescuers could be flown to the site for the time being. The 24-year-old from Lower Saxony made an emergency call on Saturday after he slipped on the Hochkalter near Ramsau near Berchtesgaden and could hardly hold his ground in the steep terrain in the freezing cold and snowstorm. Since then all contact has been lost.

It was impossible to search for him for days on foot or by helicopter because of the snowstorm and the corresponding risk of avalanches in the steep, high-Alpine terrain. On Wednesday, a helicopter with a special tracking device was able to fly over the alleged accident site for the first time. With the help of a sonar device, the rescuers tried to locate semiconductors built into electronic devices such as cell phones. But a first signal only led them to a crashed weather balloon. In the afternoon they found the young man's backpack. Further information was not initially available.