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Like a grim fairy tale gone wrong: in South Tyrol, the mountain rescue service had to save two German brothers from distress in the mountains in the middle of the night. The boys, aged 13 and 16, had been abandoned by their own parents and ended up stranded at more than 2,300 metres in front of a locked mountain refuge.
The family had set off on the hike together in Toblach. After a few hours, however, the parents turned back and simply let their sons continue alone. The plan was for the teenagers to spend the night at the Bonnerhütte, as the parents believed they were experienced enough. Yet no one had checked the opening times in advance. The traditional hut, built in 1897 by the Bonn section of the Alpine Club, had already closed for the season a week earlier.
The emergency call finally came in at around 1 a.m. The boys were out in the cold with nowhere to take shelter after climbing more than 1,000 metres in altitude. Mountain rescuers brought the brothers to safety and took them to hospital. According to the Pustertal mountain rescue service, the teenagers were inadequately dressed and severely hypothermic; one of the boys was vomiting. They have since been discharged from hospital. The rescuers spoke of "great carelessness" and stressed that such irresponsible behaviour is thankfully rare.
The story is chillingly reminiscent of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, first published in 1812. Only this time, the children were not abandoned in a forest, but on the icy heights of South Tyrol.