Guardia Civil Carries Out Triple Rescue Weekend

A mountain rescue story can sound routine until you look at what actually happened here. Over May 1 and May 2, the Guardia Civil’s mountain specialists in Granada were pulled into three separate operations in places where normal recovery just wasn’t possible — a fast river pool in Güéjar Sierra, the north face of Mulhacén, and rough ground near Huéscar. Two missions ended with the recovery of bodies. The third got an injured hiker out alive. ### Why was this weekend such a big deal? Because these were not simple “walk in, walk out” callouts. The Guardia Civil used the GREIM mountain unit and its air crew on terrain that was either steep, icy, waterlogged, or too exposed for ordinary responders. Basically, the common thread was access — every scene was hard to reach, unstable, or both. ### What happened in Güéjar Sierra? The first operation came on Friday, May 1, at about 1:30 p.m., near the Río Maitena in Güéjar Sierra. A citizen-security patrol reached the area and found a body floating in a turbulent pool. The water was too agitated for a standard recovery, so GREIM was called in and the body was lifted out and evacuated by helicopter. Early information tied the death to an attempt to save a dog that had fallen into the river. ### What made the Mulhacén rescue harder? Mulhacén is the highest peak on mainland Spain, and its north face is the nasty version of the mountain — colder, steeper, and often still loaded with snow and ice late into the season. On Saturday, May 2, at about 10:45 a.m., a man called 112 to say his partner had slipped near the summit and slid down a snowy slope out of sight. Two GREIM specialists were inserted by helicopter onto an icy hillside, found the victim, and confirmed she had died. ### And what about the surviving climber? Turns out the rescue did not end when the victim was found. The caller was still stranded on the north wall, sheltered under a rock and in severe distress. Rescuers had to move across the face using a technical descent, setting multiple anchors in rock and snow while working in an area exposed to falling ice and stones. After hours of bad weather delays, they got him to a safer zone near Laguna de la Mosca and finally flew him to Granada at 7:05 p.m. ### What happened near Huéscar? The third intervention came later that same Saturday, around 1:40 p.m., after a 112 alert about an injured hiker near Collado de las Víboras, in the Huéscar area. That one was the only mission that ended as a medical evacuation rather than a body recovery. Even so, it still counted as a high-complexity operation because the terrain was difficult enough to require the same specialist mountain-and-air response. ### Why does the helicopter matter so much? Because in these cases the aircraft was not just transport — it was the only way to put trained rescuers onto the scene and then get people or remains back out. GREIM exists for exactly this kind of terrain: mountain accidents, bad access, snow, rock, ravines, and places where a normal emergency crew would lose too much time just arriving. ### Is this unusual for Granada? Not entirely. Granada’s mix of Sierra Nevada high mountain, river gorges, and remote upland tracks means the rescue teams get called often. But three high-difficulty interventions in two days — with two fatalities and one prolonged technical extraction — is the kind of weekend that shows how quickly a holiday outing can turn into a specialist operation. ### Bottom line? This story is really about terrain. In Granada, the gap between “an accident happened” and “someone can actually reach the scene” can be huge — and this weekend the Guardia Civil had to bridge it three times.