Young hiker may have died from heatstroke during long steep mountain walk with family members in Spain’s Alicante area

A 28-YEAR-OLD man died while hiking with family members in the northern hills of Alicante province on Tuesday.

One suggestion is that heatstroke may have caused his death.

The group were walking the Barranc de l’Infern river trail as it passed through the Vall d’Ebo municipality that was badly hit in last summer’s forest fires.

The Guardia Civil were notified shortly before 6pm that a man had lost consciousness on the route after his party started their hike 11 hours earlier.

A rescue operation was launched with help from the specialist mountain rescue team as well as a medical helicopter being placed on stand-by.

On arriving at the scene, medical staff could only pronounce the death of the man, with no further information realised about him including his nationality.

Difficulty in accessing the steep narrow route on rugged terrain meant that the process of taking his body down to an area which vehicles could get to was a lengthy one.

A 90 minute operation saw the man’s body arrive at the car park from where it was transferred to Alicante for an autopsy to be carried out.

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