A YOUNG Irish woman has had a miraculous escape after getting lost in sub-zero temperatures – wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt.
The 19-year-old, who has not been named, had been drinking heavily during a ski holiday in Les Deux Alps resort.
GettyAn Irish woman has miraculously escaped freezing conditions after getting lost in the Alps[/caption]
“She was drunk when she left a club at around 4am on Wednesday morning,” said a local police spokesman.
“She was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt and had no idea where she was going.”
At freezing temps of -1 degrees Celsius, the woman wandered through the Combe de Venosc mountain forest before managing to dial 112 – the number for the emergency services in France.
But she could not remember personal details, including her own phone number.
An operator eventually managed to establish her father’s number back in Ireland, however, and he was alerted.
Police were also able to send the woman a message containing the Genloc geolocation app – which allows the authorities to locate lost people the moment they make a call.
After GPS beacons picked the woman’s position up, patrols were despatched, and she was found “suffering from hypothermia”, in the woods.
The woman was picked up by the police at around 7am, three hours after she is thought to have left the nightclub.
Commander Ludovic Saint Bonnet, of the CRS (Republican Security Companies) police unit in the Alps, said: “When we recovered her, she was suffering from some bruises.
“She must have fallen while trying to find her way back and she was suffering from slight hypothermia.
“We can say that she is a miracle, because alone, so little dressed, she would not have been able to resist the cold for long.
The Commander went on to say that it was a “real relief” when the team found her, saying that drunk people had died in this part of the mountains before.
He also called for better regulation, saying: “Just because we go out to nightclubs shouldn’t mean that we should forget to dress in accordance with the environment what surrounds us.”
The young woman was transported by helicopter to the Emergency Department of Grenoble University Hospital, where she continued to recover on Thursday.
She was expected to make a full recovery, before returning home to Ireland.
The news comes just months after British hiker Aidan Roche was found dead on a mountain trail in the Swiss Alps.
It’s understood he was on the Eiger Trail before taking a cable car to the Eiger glacier, where he then walked northeast down the trail.
Mountain rescue teams walked the route Aidan had taken before, and sadly discovered his body.
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