One member of a 17-person hiking team died while the rest have been trapped on Mount Chilai’s (奇萊) eastern ridge due to weather.
An emergency airlift helicopter was dispatched earlier today to rescue the hikers, leaving at 9am with a plan to fly three missions to bring them all down.
The 17-member team had applied to climb the mountain’s eastern ridge route, starting off on Saturday with a plan to end at Yuewangting (岳王亭) by today.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
However, on Monday, one of the hikers lost contact with the group, and was later found lying on the trail having suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
The 58-year-old victim surnamed Lee (李) was found lying down on the mountain trail unconscious and without a pulse.
The rest of the hikers were unable to move forward due to heavy snowfall, remaining trapped in the Mount Panshi Middle Peak Cabin (磐石中峰山屋).
Eight ground-based search and rescue personnel went through the snow on Monday to search for the hikers, but found it difficult to advance through the 30cm-deep snow while wearing 30kg of equipment, said Wen Chung-hau (溫宗豪), deputy chief of Hualien County Fire Department’s First Corps disaster relief team.
Due to adverse weather, rescue helicopters were unable to take off during the previous two days, Wen added.
The 16 trapped people said they were able to save food, but reported feeling abdominal pain, dizziness and altitude sickness, Wen said, adding that they still needed a rescue.
As the weather improved slightly today, a rescue helicopter was dispatched at 9am to provide relief to the trapped hikers and bring them all down in batches throughout the day, in addition to the deceased person.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS