After 40 years, the family of Marta ‘Patty’ Altamirano was able to recover her body, closing a wound of more than 40 years. As is well known, last month the body of “a young mountaineer” had been found on one of the ice walls of Cerro Mercedario in San Juan, and although all the presumptions pointed to Patty Altamirano, the rigorous verifications were lacking. The forensic examination estimated that the remains were of a woman between the ages of 18 and 30, a range that matched Altamirano’s, and this Friday the one who finished confirming the finding was Corina, Marta’s sister and one of the people who accompanied her on that unfortunate adventure on the Mercedario hill that would end with a fatal fall.
At that moment, Corina and another climber could reach where Patty had fallen, verifying that she had died, but when they came down the hill and the search operation was mounted, days later, a snow storm had covered the area and there was no way to find the corpse. from Patty.
“For very specific elements, we are sure that it is my sister’s clothes,” said Corina Altamirano.
The body was attached to a glacier at an altitude of 5,000 meters and was spotted by a group of climbers who were passing there on Tuesday, January 24. After an hour of examination in the facilities of the Laboratory and the Judicial Morgue, Corina declared “due to very specific elements, we are sure that it is my sister’s clothes, it is her…”.
Although the DNA results are still missing, which, according to the attorney general Eduardo Quatropanni in charge of the case, will take seven days, Corina assured that having found her sister’s remains represents “deep peace” for her entire family.
The frustrated rescue of 1981
Corina Altamirano told local media that together with her companion Sergio they went down after Marta’s fall and saw that she had died, so they went down to ask for help with the rescue of the body. Both recorded the point of the accident, but that night she “snowed like never before” and the body was buried in the snow, Corina explained to the local media sanjuan8.com: “The helicopter that went up could not do anything. We decided to wait for time to pass and the thaws will occur,” he added.
But when in December 1981 they traveled to try to access the body, a crack in the hill resulted in the body falling into an inaccessible precipice. “We mourned knowing that the Mercedarian would remain in eternity,” told the same local media. Corina added that, although the discovery of her sister’s body brought happiness to her 79 and 89-year-old parents, for her it meant reopening a wound, remembering those dark days of 1981.
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