The mushroom picker who fell on the Promesciallo slopes has died

The seventy-five-year-old man who fell on Sunday 9 August on the slopes of Promesciallo, in the municipality of Prugiasco in the Blenio valley, has died. He lived in the Locarnese and was picking mushrooms when, while standing on a rock, he fell some fifty metres.

The rescue was immediate. The man was flown to hospital by Rega helicopter and reached the emergency department in a condition described as very critical. Over the following three days his clinical picture did not improve.

Prugiasco is part of the municipality of Acquarossa, created by the 2004 merger, and the Promesciallo slopes lie on the flank rising from the valley floor. It is steep ground, wooded and broken by exposed rock, where a rescue almost always depends on a helicopter: the nearness of a road does not shorten the time it takes to reach someone who has fallen.

Mushroom picking draws a large number of people into mountain areas every summer and autumn, onto ground that does not always resemble a path. Those looking for mushrooms move off marked routes, look at the ground rather than ahead, and often end up on steep slopes, wet terrain or leaf-covered rock. That is why, in Swiss mountain accident statistics, the gathering of mushrooms and forest produce appears regularly alongside hiking.

In Ticino the season has just begun, and outings intensify in the weeks following the first August rains.