Hiker stranded at ‘center of landslide’ in Italian Dolomites rescued by helicopter — and hit with $16K bill after ignoring warnings

A hiker who wound up stranded at the “center of a landslide” in the Italian Dolomites after ignoring warning signs was rescued by a helicopter crew who saved his life, but cost him more than $16,000.

The 60-year-old hiker from England, who was not identified, was rescued via helicopter last week after he notified emergency services that he was “on the Berti via ferrata and that rocks were falling from above,” Veneto Alpine and Speleological Rescue, or CNSAS, wrote on Facebook.

The man had brushed aside signs that the treacherous trails were closed due to falling rocks and was trekking through without proper equipment.

Without an emergency GPS or similar device, he was unable to give the search crew proper coordinates, which only prolonged his rescue, according to CNSAS.

“Once he had reconstructed his theoretical position, he was told not to move from his sheltered spot and to wait for help to arrive, as the mountain was currently hidden by clouds. To decide on the recovery strategy, the hiker’s exact position was needed, so they had to wait for the clouds to clear.

“When the clouds cleared, the San Vito di Cadore Alpine Rescue team unfortunately discovered that the hiker was right in the center of the landslide, at an altitude of 2,400 meters (nearly 7,900 feet),” CNSAS wrote.

The adventurer had ignored four signs, at minimum, posted in Italian and English telling hikers to turn back. As if those weren’t enough, he also had to leg it over a steep barrier, CNSAS officials added.

Additional trails were forced to close along the range after the man’s painstaking rescue which involved two helicopters, according to CNSAS.

After the neglectful Englishman was safely removed from the mountainside last Thursday, he was asked to pony up €14,225 — or roughly $16,400 — to compensate the two rescue helicopters and more than a dozen other support personnel who helped retrieve him.

If the hiker had been from the European Union, he would’ve been fined just a couple hundred euros — but he lost that privilege after the United Kingdom’s rocky withdrawal in 2020.

This summer has been Italy’s most deadly hiking season of the last century, with casualties cropping up left and right and rescue calls spiking by up to 20% compared to last year.

Between June 21 and July 23 alone, 80 people died along the Italian Alps and the Dolomites mountain ranges, according to CNSAS. Five others are still missing.