The Guardia Civil mountain-rescue team had to come to the assistance of a man with snow blindness and another man in a wheelchair.

At 21.00h on Saturday the 5th, the poilice received a call from a man at the Refugio de Poqueira who was suffering from snow blindness after having trekked up to the Mulhacen peak without any form of eye-ware protection against the glare of the snow.

The victim, upon losing his sight and suffering acute pain in his eyes, had a nervous breakdown. The police managed to calm him down over the phone and informed him that they would be there at first light to fly him down in the rescue helicopter – his life was not in danger to require immediate evacuation.

First thing the next day, they picked him up and flew him to the main hospital in Granada, where he was treated for complete snow blindness.

Meanwhile a group of ten Danish excursionists, amongst them a man in an electric wheelchair, were on a mountain track near the electricity-generation station El Duque, which is in the municipality of Órgiva, near where the Guadalfeo and Poqueira rivers join.

The man in the wheelchair was unable to keep up with his companions owing to the poor state of the track and was using a battery-operated respirator which was running low on power.

The police rescue team and the fire service based in Cádiar turned up where the group were waiting for assistance for the man, which was no easy task as the track needed work on it in order for the fire truck to reach that point and bring him down to the power station where a vehicle adapted to carry wheelchairs was waiting.

The rest of the hikers were transported down to Órgiva.

(News: Orgiva, Alpujarra, Granada, Andalucia)