Austrian mountain police officer Bernhard Magritzer said the man's father had alerted German police after his son had not returned from his climb last Saturday and he could not reach him on his mobile phone - which, the father said, was unusual. 
 
 The man has not been identified due to Austrian privacy laws. 
 
 Winter-like conditions and a danger of avalanches made the rescue attempt dangerous on the Dachstein, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south east of Salzburg. It is the second highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. 
 
 Police found the alpinist's car near a lake below the mountain late on Wednesday night. The trapped man was able to make a call from his mobile phone but the signal broke off after a few seconds. 
 
 "My colleague heard someone breathing heavily and reacted in the right way," Magritzer said. 
 
 The rescue service switched communications to text messages and the man was able to explain his situation and give an exact location. "We would not have found him otherwise," Magritzer said. A three-hour search at 2,050 meters altitude in the middle of the night followed. 
 
 At about 4 a.m. the man was rescued from his 30-meter-deep hole and flown by emergency helicopter to the Wels clinic where he was reported to have only slight injuries to a shoulder and ankle. 
 
 The Dachstein's northern glaciers 
 
 Thirty years ago - same time, same place 
 
 Austrian television had on Wednesday evening shown a program about the 1985 rescue of a US soldier who was also found alive, also in November, but after 19 days on the Dachstein. He had broken his leg two days into his climb over a glacier. 
 
 Kenneth Cichowich from Buffalo NY, who was deputy chief of staff for logistics at the US Army European headquarters in Heidelberg, West Germany at the time, gave credit to his mountain survival training. 
 
 He spent six days eating snow before he was rescued by two men lowered from a helicopter who asked his name. "Then they said: 'You're the man we're looking for,'" Cichowich said at the time. "I was never so happy or so surprised." 
 
 jm/kms (AP, dpa)
– Austrian emergency teams have rescued a German mountaineer who spent five days in a deep glacier crevice after slipping. Officials say the man was found in the 100-foot-deep gap Thursday after he succeeded in making an emergency call from his cellphone following numerous failed attempts because of poor reception, the AP reports. The man had been reported missing by his father Saturday on the rugged Dachstein range southeast of the city of Salzburg. State broadcaster ORF cites an alpine rescue official as saying the man is only "relatively lightly hurt" considering the drop, with shoulder and foot injuries. Deutsche Welle, which notes the poor weather and risk of avalanches made rescuers' efforts more difficult, documents how police first found the man's car near a lake at the foot of the mountain Wednesday night. He'd been trying to make calls from his phone, and finally one call went through, though only for a few seconds. A quick-thinking member of the rescue team switched communications over to texting, at which point the man was able to relay to them where he was. "We would not have found him otherwise," another rescuer says. The man was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital after the early morning rescue. He's not being identified due to Austrian privacy laws.