[Animals] 'Rust', the border collie who rescued a lost hiker in Patagonia

[Draeno]

There were two barks that sounded like two shots. Romina Zárate woke up believing that she had dreamed it, that her head, dazed by stress and an unfathomable fatigue, was beginning to play tricks on her. He closed his eyes again and then he heard another dog barking. If there was a dog there might be a rescue group. Only she didn't have the strength to stand up, to scream, to save herself. Then, the fear of dying gave her strength: in a bad way she stood up on her bare, bleeding, semi-frozen feet and began to scream, she remembered that she was dressed in black and that no one would see her like that, so she grabbed her gray backpack and red and lifted it above her head, shaking it as if possessed. Then someone yelled behind her, "I see her." A few minutes later, a rescuer was hugging.

50 volunteers, inhabitants and climbers visiting El Chaltén, a tiny enclave lost in Argentine Patagonia, had spent three days looking for a needle in the immense haystack of land that surrounds the area's iconic mountains: Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy. . It is one of the wildest and most isolated places on Earth, a land also subjected to maddening weather. It is also one of the epicenters of mountaineering and trekking, a place that receives huge masses of mountain tourists who come and go, up and down, despite the fact that there is no professional rescue service or helicopters. The El Chaltén Relief Commission is made up of volunteers, and right now the hero of this motley crew is called Rust, an eight-year-old border collie trained to find lost people. Romina's is her first rescue.

The dog's owner is Carolina Codó, also the local doctor and the creator of the rescue service. With the help of professional trainers, Carolina trained her dog and has not stopped methodically training him for years. Just in case, because in this place all the help is few. But on the day Rust's work was most needed, the doctor was away on vacation, and the dog was in the care of one of her best friends, Angie Felgueras, whose house is just a few meters away. “I've seen Caro train Rust so many times that I knew the orders I had to give her to start looking, so together with a friend we chose an area and started walking. Normally, the dog always tries to play, he brings us sticks, we throw them at him, but when he gives the order, he stops playing and starts searching tirelessly”, explains Angie.

Romina, 36, went missing on Friday, April 21. He left his lodging in El Chaltén at nine in the morning and did not say where he was going, one of the most repeated recommendations by the bodies that govern the world of mountaineering: "It is an error that I assume," he says. In the middle of the afternoon, after passing through the top of Loma del Pliegue, the hiker realized that she was not returning along the same path she had used to ascend. He considered turning around, but agreed that it would be very difficult for him to find the path on which he had been progressing for some time. Soon after, she knew she was lost, but took comfort in the knowledge that the town was not far away and that she would be able to find a way to get back... before nightfall. Also, if he managed to find the Fitz Roy River, which is a tributary of the Las Vueltas River, which passes through El Chaltén, following it would be enough to return to civilization. Soon after, she saw a torrent and followed it, convinced that it would lead her to the watercourse. But the increasingly vertical and slippery terrain, coupled with the increasing rush to prevent nightfall, played a trick on him: he fell about twenty feet, bouncing between mossy rocks and hitting his entire left side violently.

When he got to his feet, his left wrist was broken. But the river was in sight. Crossing it nearly finished her off. Seconds after starting to splash, the benign-looking current was dragging her helplessly, so after losing her footing, she let herself be carried face up. The water was frozen. “I was beginning to not feel my feet, since the force of the water had taken my boots. I told myself that if I didn't get to shore fast, I would never make it. I don't know how, but I managed to stand up and save the final six meters”, he recalls in a telephone conversation. It was on the other side, but in a terrifying terrain of bushes, rocks, dense vegetation, and with a small hill or mountain in front of it. She decided to go up, but barefoot, her feet were immediately a picture of torn socks and bloody toes.

 

 

https://elpais.com/deportes/el-montanista/2023-05-08/rust-el-border-collie-que-rescato-a-una-senderista-perdida-en-la-patagonia.html