Just read this in the Guardian site:
The article mentions that
The hiker was carrying an amateur walkie-talkie, which he used to call for help. A person nearby picked up but had difficulty pinpointing the man’s location, at an elevation of about 3,200 metres.
Good dog!
Both were lucky… the man and the dog.
But in general, I think it’s irresponsible to walk across a glacier alone. Rescuers have often lost their lives due to the stupidity of individuals
Hopefully, this article won’t inspire others to copy it.
73 Armin
Hi Rob,
It’s a funny story that I first came across on a Swiss website, but also from the rescue team of Air Zermatt.
First, a small detail: The Guardian article made it clear that the dog is probably not a chihuahua, but a papillon (I think Armin @DL6GCA knows the difference 
).
What drew my attention, though, was the information that the hiker was carrying an amateur walkie-talkie and used it to call for help.
I wonder if it was really an amateur radio and, if so, if anyone else heard more information about. This could be good marketing for our hobby!
73 Stephan
Me too - otherwise I would not have bothered to open this thread here. I do wonder how a signal could have got out into the clear from within the crevasse - enough for another to have heard him to alert the rescue services. Perhaps you’ll get more details, Stephan, from the news services there.
This is one of the nightmare emergency comms scenarios, really.
I had a too-close encounter with a 10m deep rock crack obscured by vegetation & forest-litter earlier in the year. I was carrying a handie, InReach and EPIRB, on a track that would see maybe 2-3 visits a year. I’m not sure VHF/UHF (or yelling loudly) would have made it out of a 1m wide crack in the rock 10m above. The chance of the InReach completing it’s connection handshake and short-burst-data transmission in the sub-second timing of a satellite passing through the field of view of the sky was pretty-near nil, even assuming a satellite did pass directly overhead at the time that the inreach did its periodic transmission attempts. So in the absence of company on-site, that would have left me hoping for a commercial aircraft overfly to detect the EPIRB carrier+tone (unlikely to decode a position, but even a carrier should trigger an alert). All assuming I were conscious!
Thankfully I was in company, which is really the only sure way to ensure rescue / response in this scenario. And through luck or quick reactions did not pay a sub-second visit all the way to the base of the abyss, though some of my gear did. But it certainly had us thinking.
EDIT: Recalling the title of the topic, I dont think Lassie would have helped, either. Unless she knew how to belay.
Yikes Matt,
How many of us have gone into unknown territory alone? Glad you had accomplished company.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Great minds…
Ice is a pretty good insulator, unless it starts to melt and the melting water is not pure, i.e. contains some kind of salt. However, glacial water contains very little salt, which makes it a poor conductor. I guess, therefore, that it should be possible to get a signal out of a 6 m deep glacier crevasse.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, as I have never tested it myself.
Note: A few years ago at Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen, I attended a fascinating talk about an amateur radio station in Antarctica. They laid the dipole directly on the ice, which was several hundred metres thick and therefore several hundred metres in the air!
I didn’t hear or see any specific information, so I don’t know.
Maybe with his (open/modded) amateur radio (or commercial one) he was not using an amateur frequency, but the Swiss-wide emergency frequency of 161.3 MHz, which is license-free. The Swiss Air-Rescue Rega runs a network and monitors this frequency.
Indeed, I’m glad you were not alone!
73 Stephan