Thomas Huber is on his feet again

“I already feel a lot better again,” Thomas Huber writes to me from the hospital in the Bavarian town of Traunstein. If that’s not good news! After all, the 49-year-old German top climber – as reported yesterday – had fallen twelve meters deep from a rock face on the Brendlberg near the village of Scheffau. According to the German website bgland24.de, the accident happened when Huber was abseiling. Thomas was standing on a small ledge, unclipped from the belay to take another rope, when he lost his balance. This could have ended in catastrophe. Probably owing only to “1000 guardian angels” (Thomas) and his instinct, nothing worse happened to him.

No permanent damage

Thomas landed “like a cat” on the soft forest floor, he told bgland24.de. Huber was even able to walk along with his climbing partner Michael Grassl to the place where the ambulance was waiting. However, the diagnosis at the hospital in Traunstein was alarming: skull fracture. Thomas immediately had to go under the knife. It was a surgery without complications. The doctors’ prognosis is positive: No permanent damage. The other injuries – broken or partially fractured spinous processes of a few vertebrae – will heal. If everything goes well, Thomas will be able to leave the hospital next week.