![]() The Simons returned to the lodge and reported their discovery to the caretaker, Markus Pirpamer. Face down, the remains were dried out, the person’s skin leathered-smooth, hairless, orange. Just feet away from them was the head and upper back of a human being suspended in the slushy water. As Helmut’s mind caught up to what his eyes were seeing, Erika cried out, “Look, it’s a person!” His first reaction was anger, thinking it was a piece of trash marring the magnificent landscape. They were skirting a trench when Helmut looked down into a pool of thawing snow. The Simons looked for the trail that would take them back to the lodge. Everything that Ötzi possessed are things recognizable to us today. Soon after their descent began, the new friends said their goodbyes to Helmut and Erika and took off in a different direction. By noon, the group reached the blustery summit and then headed back down. ![]() Patches of liquifying snow were spread across a broken patch of sharp fragmented stone, colored charcoal and ash. The trail took them through a barren landscape, far above the tree line. With some new friends they had met at the lodge, the couple started out for Finail Peak. The Simons decided to squeeze in another hike. They wouldn’t be able to make it back to their hotel in Vernagt, Italy, before nightfall, so they found their way to a rustic stone-and-wood lodge set high up among the peaks. As they happily descended, daylight began to fade. ![]() They threaded their way across the fields of melting ice and crevasses until eventually they stood at the top of Similaun, triumphantly looking down on the world from a height of nearly 12,000 feet. The Simons were on vacation from Nuremberg, Germany. Icy rivers raced downhill, carving small gullies, tunnels, and caves that dropped into blackness and the unknown. Glaciers blanketing the mountains were melting. On the morning of September 18, 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon set out to ascend Similaun, a diamond-shaped peak that rises into the clouds of the Italian-Austrian Alps.
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