Home » News » The last adventure of the gang that lived for the mountain | Spain

The last adventure of the gang that lived for the mountain | Spain

They lived for the mountains and there they found death. Three members of a group of climbing enthusiasts died this Wednesday after an accident in a river gorge in northeastern Switzerland; a fourth member is still missing. The expedition was surprised by an intense storm while it was in a ravine in the town of Vättis, in the canton of Saint Gallen. Police investigations indicate that the waterspout dragged them through large amounts of water and stones in some canyons where the level of the river channels multiplies when there is a storm. Only two women were saved, who decided not to continue the route that afternoon. They alerted that their companions did not return.

The relationship between these friends and the mountain came from afar. Their experience had taken them through peaks, canyons, cliffs and tunnels in pure rock all over Europe. That is why they were not accompanied by a guide. That is why the news has impacted so much in their places of origin. The flags of the Allo City Council, a town in southern Navarra of about a thousand inhabitants, are tied by a black crepe: one of the deceased, Mikel Lasa, and the disappeared, Diego Maeztu, were from there. Lasa, 33, had worked at a gas station and was now working in the fields; Maeztu, 38, was an employee of a steel mill in Murieta. Paula, a neighbor, relates that one of the surviving women was Maeztu’s partner and highlights how this gang “escaped” whenever they could, heading to any cliff in their van: “They were adventurers who love nature.”

The waitress of a nearby bar defines what happened as “a very hard blow for the people.” “They are young people that we treat every day, it has caused us tremendous pain,” he adds. The group’s favorite destination was the canyons of Huesca, and they took advantage of the summer to head to the Central European mountain ranges, a challenge for those who had founded a caving association in Allo two years ago. The complex orography and adverse weather in the area near Lake Gigerwald, the point where these abrupt canyons ended, caused rescuers – up to 100 troops with dogs, drones, divers and mountain specialists – not to be able to find the missing person and It will take several hours to locate the bodies, washed away by the water. The search for Maeztu seems difficult, according to sources close to his family, because “four or six meters of waterfall and a lot of mud fell on them.” Sad tone also in a bar in Allo: “Both had begun to become independent and stabilize their partners.” The City Council has decreed seven days of mourning. Just listen to the mayor, Susana Castenera: “Today we are not from any political party. We are all one ”.

Javier Munarriz, with tears in his eyes, adds that his friends Diego and Mikel, with whom he had been hiking for 15 years, “adored ravines, they were their true passion.” And he describes the area of ​​the tragedy as “a place with a high water component for canyoning and with a lot of attraction for this sport.”

Misfortune has also overwhelmed Uharte-Arakil, a Navarrese town of 800 neighbors at the foot of the Aralar mountain range. Mikel Zabalza, another of the accident victims, was going to turn 30 on August 15. The mother of one of his friends relates that he was a “canyonist from a young age”. Zabalza, federated in mountaineering, worked in a foundry in Salvatierra (Álava) and his passion for adventure guided him around the world, with France as his usual destination.

The third fatality was called Andoni González, he was 48 years old and lived in Güeñes (Bizkaia, 6,000 inhabitants). Nature united this group, who uploaded to their social networks images of amazing landscapes such as snow-capped peaks, crossings through the rock with harnesses, abysses only illuminated by the light of their helmets or meadows well above sea level. They founded the Kat-Team, a collective that brought together those friends united by the mountain. One of his friends affirms that “they were highly qualified people in the world of ravines and mountains”. The flag of that wild cat that observes the shadow of a climber is in mourning.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.