BERLIN — A man has died after falling from a peak in the Austrian Alps as he was trying to take a photo of a companion with whom he had reached the summit, police said Tuesday.
The 77-year-old German and his companion, a 63-year-old Spanish woman, hiked to the Greitspitze — a peak about 9,400 feet above sea level on the Austrian-Swiss border — on Sunday, police in Tyrol province said.
The man took a picture of the woman next to the cross marking the summit, then stepped back to take a photo from further away, police said in a statement. He lost his balance after apparently failing to notice that he was close to the edge and fell down a roughly 200-foot rock face, sustaining fatal injuries.
Rescue services were alerted by a witness who was also at the summit at the time. The man’s body was recovered by a police helicopter.