Six expatriates who had gone out for a day hike on Wednesday — and who were reported missing within the Mt. Talinis mountain range in Valencia, Negros Oriental — have all been rescued.
Alexander Radvanyl from Britain, 60, and Torsten Martin Groschupp from Germany, 58, arrived at the Incident Command Center in barangay Malabo, Valencia at 2:12 p.m. of Friday, accompanied by teams of volunteers who formed the rescue teams.
Radvanyl and Groschupp told authorities they got separated from their four other companiions around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, hours after they had first set off on foot for a day hike at Sitio Lunas in Barangay Malabo, Valencia.
They said they were unable to communicate with the others or their families since there was no mobile phone signal in the mountains.
Radvanyl’s live-in partner, Lenni Godinez, filed a Missing Persons report on Wednesday evening, after the six hikers failed to return at the end of the day.
“They regularly go on walks, and they are always home before dark,” she told reporters. But that time, the police could not yet log a Missing Persons report until after 24 hours had passed, so she had to return to the police station in the morning.
Radvanyl and Groshupp said they slept under a tree Wednesday night. By Thursday, they continued walking, looking for their way back home. It was raining periodically, they said, and had been walking into a dense forest, which made them more disoriented.
Edgar and Evelyn Rio, a couple from Malabo, Valencia, heard of talks about the missing foreign hikers, and decided to join the search on Thursday.
They first proceeded to Lake Balinsasayao, and when they learned that the foreigners were not there, the couple decided to look for them westward.
By Friday, Radvanyl and Groshupp made a plan: Radvanyl would go and look for the trail that would lead them back home, while Groshupp would wait by the waterfall.
“I remember the river very well, so I walked along the river to see if this was the same river or a different one. After 30 minutes, I was sure it was a different river. Then I could hear a helicopter, and all sorts of things but there wasn’t. I was hallucinating. I heard videoke and stuff, and I shouted, then I saw Evelyn, Edgar, and Gary,” Radvanyl said.
He said Edgar shouted, “We are rescuers!”, which made him feel so relieved. Then he led them to Groshupp who was waiting at the top of the waterfall.
“They were shivering, and their fingers had turned pale from the cold,” Edgar said in the vernacular.
Evelyn added, “Luckily, we brought rice and humba because we knew they would be hungry.”
When the expats were served food, one of them said, “Rice!” and ate with gusto.
1Lt. Shennazar Seronay of the Army’s Kalasag Battalion analyzed the path of the trekkers based on information provided by the two expats. He said that after walking fruitlessly for two days in their bid to go home, Radvanyl and Groshupp were found by the Rio couple, walking along a river upstream in Badiaoan, a few kilometers west of Lake Balinsasayao.
“They were just walking around in circles,” Seronay said.
The four other foreigners were rescued Saturday morning in barangay Silab in Amlan, more than 33 kilometers from where they started their trek Wednesday. The hikers were: German nationals Wolfgang Arthur Schlenker, 67, and Aldwin Fink, 60; Russian national Anton Chernov, 38; and a Kenyan-Australian Terry de Gunten, 65.
Instead of heading for Lake Balinsasayao, the four trekkers unknowingly had walked around the Lake, which sits within an 8,000-hectare protected area spanning the towns of Valencia, Sibulan, and San Jose.
After they were rescued, witnesses said the hikers obviously looked exhausted from all the walking they had done for the past four days; one of them had to be carried down in a stretcher.
After the rescuers turned them over to the Valencia Disaster Risk-Reduction & Management Office, the four hikers were taken to the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital for a medical checkup.
Aside from responders from Valencia’s DRRM office, volunteers from the Negros Mountaineering Organization Wilderness First Responders Inc., and rescue groups from the towns of Sibulan and San Jose also helped in the search operations, according to Jeri Tabuniar, Operations chief of Operation Banyaga.
The 11th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army and the Philippine National Police were also on hand to provide security.
Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, 11IB commanding officer, led his team in coordinating with rescuers to pinpoint the location of the missing trekkers.
Will this mishap stop them from going hiking in Negros Oriental again? “Perhaps not, but I would be sure to bring more water, a powerbank, and food,” Groshupp said. (Judy Flores and Alex Pal)
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Photo Caption: Torsten Martin Groschupp (leftmost) and Alexander Radvanyl (3rd from left) express their gratitude to Evelyn Rio who, along with her husband Edgar, found them Friday wandering aimlessly for more than two days in the thick jungle west of Lake Balinsasayao. (Photo by Alex Pal)
