Woman rescued after two days in ice crevasse

A woman was saved from a Swiss glacier after plummeting 10 meters (33 feet) into a crevasse and staying there for two days and two nights, reported the Swiss-based Air Zermatt rescue service.

"The Zermatt mountain rescue service has not experienced such a miracle rescue in the past 20 years," the team said in a statement.

The Russian woman who lives in Germany went for a walk on the Border Glacier in the southwestern Valais canton on Sunday when the accident happened. She had gone out wearing shorts and with no proper mountaineering gear, despite warnings from the staff at the nearby Monte Rosa mountain hut, the rescuers said.

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Walking over the glacier, she dropped into a crevasse but landed on an ice bridge inside the fissure.

Passing mountaineers eventually heard her call for help and alerted the mountain rescue team.

Read more: Swiss avalanche kills 4 German skiers

While the tourist was uninjured, her body temperature after 48 hours in the crevasse had dropped to 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 degrees Fahrenheit) — some 3 degrees C lower than the average for a healthy human.

The rescue team said she was particularly lucky as she was traveling alone, meaning there was no one to alert the rescuers that she was missing.

The border glacier in the Monte Rosa massif above the town Zermatt is about 4,000 meters above sea level. It is considered the main arm of the Gorner Glacier system in the Swiss Alps, however, the system is retreating due to climate change.