An Army soldier stands guard next to the coffins of comrades who died in a snow storm in the Andes Saturday, at the army barracks in Los Angeles, Chile.

Chilean soldiers on Saturday searched the Andes mountains for 29 comrades lost when a blizzard struck during a training march, but their commander admitted that they almost certainly would be found dead.

The number of bodies found after Wednesday’s storm increased to 16, the army said. The military took advantage of the first clear day since the blizzard started to deploy nearly 150 men in the largest ground and air search so far.

“Hope is the last thing we should lose,” army chief Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre said as he prepared to leave to the mountain leading the search patrols.

Meanwhile, 112 soldiers who survived the storm, including seven women, were flown by helicopter to Los Angeles, 400 miles south of the capital, Santiago, from the mountain shelter where they had sought refuge.

The soldiers, draftees between 18 and 19 years old, had been on a training march in the Andes Mountains on Wednesday when they were hit by the worst snowstorm in decades.