The police in Hunedoara county have opened a criminal investigation for manslaughter after two young Romanian mountain climbers, both of them record holders, died in an avalanche in Retezat Mountains on Saturday.

The two young climbers were Dor Geta Popescu, 13, and Erik Gulacsi, 12, both world renowned for their climbing records. According to the forensic experts, they died from numerous brain-traumatic injuries, and death occurred almost immediately.

The police already questioned several people in this case, but plan to talk to all those who were on the mountain at the time when the incident happened, reports local News.ro. The police are trying to find out what exactly happened there, as they don’t exclude the option that the avalanche was caused by the people who were in the area at that moment.

The two teenagers who died in the avalanche were on the mountain together with their fathers, the boy’s sister, and two other women. They were on their way to Peleaga Peak, going on a track that was part of the 7 Mountains in the Carpathian Garden circuit.

The mountain rescuers had been asking all tourists to stay off the mountain because of the high risk of avalanche. According to one of the rescuers who participated in the last days’ rescuing missions, the group went on a very difficult track without respecting some important rules.

“They didn’t have that technical equipment, namely they were not tied with ropes, they were not wearing protection helmets; they died because they got hit by the rocks, the avalanche wasn’t big,” said alpinist Sorin Sanda, cited by local Digi24. According to him, protection helmets could have saved the two climbers’ lives.

Moreover, Sanda also said that the climbers failed to test the ground one by one, as they should have, but went all at once on a thick layer of snow that cracked and slipped with all of them. Normally, one of them should have tested the layer of snow at first, to see if it was resistant.

During their trip in Retezat Mountains, the group of seven people also met a larger group, of some 50 people, who were also heading to Peleaga Peak. At first, the mountain rescuers believed that the avalanche was caused by the larger group, which was made of students of a school of mountain guides.

However, Catalin Berenghi, the leader of the group of students, explained in a long Facebook post how things happened. According to him, the group he was leading met with the smaller group that was also going to Peleaga Peak, and recommended them to also take the route they were walking on.

“We started our trip to the top, but we were soon surpassed by the seven people who started on the summer route, namely on the level curve. I was surprised that they didn’t take the ridge route as indicated for winter trips, and continued on the route with risk of avalanche,” Berenghi wrote on Facebook.

A little bit later, he heard a woman screaming for help, saying that there was an avalanche. Three people equipped with ropes, first aid kits and walkie-talkies went to see what happened, they being the ones that found the two young climbers dead, and the other five injured. Thus, the bigger group decided to abandon the climb to the top and regroup with the five survivors.

Dor Geta Popescu achieved her first record when she was 10. She became the youngest person to climb the Ararat Mountain, breaking the record held by her older sister, Coco Popescu, who had done so when she was 12 years and a half. In 2016, Dor Geta Popescu became the youngest climber to reach the Aconcagua peak, 6,962 meters above sea level. She was a professional mountain climber, part of the Rasnov Altitude Mountain Climbing Club.

Her colleague Erik Gulacsi has been practicing mountain climbing since he was 8. In 2016, he climbed the Elbrus peak, 5,642 meters; he was the youngest boy in Europe to have done so. His most recent European record was in January this year, when, at 12 years old, he reached the Aconcagua peak.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com