It doesn't matter if it's winter or summer; people are always getting lost, twisting ankles, falling down barrancos and Sereim is always there to rescue them.

Hopefully the Guardia Civil mountain-rescue teams carried out their last rescue for 2021 after rescuing a couple in their 50s and their three offspring up in the Sierra Nevada on Wednesday the 29th. The family were British…

The rescue took place in the Barranco de San Juan around 16.45h after the 53-year-old woman broke her collar bone in a fall and the whole family found itself trapped on steep ground unable to make their way to a road .

The broken bone wasn’t the problem; what was likely to kill the whole family was hypothermia as they were trapped in the snow but thanks to the Servicio de Montaña de la Guardia Civil they were located and rescued with none the worse for wear other than the mother who also had scratches and bruises, as well as the broken, collar bone.

What surprised the rescuers most was the fact that the woman was wearing shorts… In fact none of the family was equipped for traversing snow. The rescue team managed to get close to the family in a 4×4 because it was too late in the afternoon to use a helicopter. The family were 500 metres away from the road at the bottom of the barranco.

The Guardia Civil specialists descended using ropes, taking warm clothes to those below before bringing the woman back up on a stretcher. The three children were given crampons and secured to a rope so that they could be hauled up.

It wasn’t until 22.45h that they managed to get the family to a waiting ambulance. All of the family had to be treated for the onset of hypothermia because they simply were not clothed for walking in the snow.

Editorial comment: *Speechless*

(News: Sierra Nevada, Granada, Andalucia)