Walter Finch
RESCUE teams looking for a British hiker who was swept away by a torrent in Mallorca have found a pair of trousers and a shoe.
The Guardia Civil has confirmed that the items, found among branches in a middle section of the torrent, belonged to the 32-year-old man who fell into the watercourse on Tuesday.
He was washed away along with his 26-year-old girlfriend, whose body was found on Wednesday morning.
The British couple went missing in the Serra de Tramuntana following a severe storm that battered the island.
The search, carried out by specialists from the Guardia Civil and Mallorca Firefighters, was suspended at nightfall and resumed early Friday morning.
Divers from the Armed Institute’s Underwater Activities Group have joined the search for the missing man, inspecting the deepest pools in the watercourse, which was flooded by torrential rains on Tuesday.
The mountain rescue team leader, Juan Carlos Rodríguez, said: “I have faith that we will find him.”
A group of 10 hikers who managed to get rescued — two Spaniards, along with French, German, and British nationals — said that the couple had been swept away in Torrent de Pareis, Escorca.
According to reports, a sudden torrential surge caught the woman unawares and snatched her away, with the man suffering a similar fate when trying to save her.
The Torrent de Pareis is a deep, narrow gorge that stretches about 3km from the Gorg Blau reservoir to its mouth at the Cala de Sa Calobra, a small cove on the northern coast of Mallorca.
The walls can reach heights of up to 200 metres, and the gorge narrows to just a few metres across in some parts.
During heavy rains, water captured in surrounding areas flows into the gorge, causing the dry riverbed to flood rapidly.
The narrowness of the gorge creates a funnel effect, and in a matter of minutes the sudden waters turn into a raging torrent that experts have described as ‘attacking’ during heavy rainfall.
Hikers caught in the gorge during these conditions have little time to react and few places where they can escape to once a flash flood begins.
Five people have died while hiking in the rocky gorges and ravines of Mallorca’s Serra de Tramuntana since 2017 – largely experienced canyoneers.
In January 2020, Balearic freediving champion David Cabrera, 34, vanished while canyoning in the Torrent de na Mora.
Search teams – including the GEAS – were deployed to rescue him, but they were hindered by the ongoing storm. His body was never recovered.
Another canyoneer, Joaquin Muñoz, 59, died in 2019 after torrential waters washed him off a 60 metre cliff, and in 2017 a 46-year-old woman drowned after getting tangled in ropes.
