An Austrian court late on Thursday found a 37-year-old amateur mountaineer guilty of manslaughter over his girlfriend’s death of cold near Austria’s highest summit after he left her to fetch help, local media reported.
The court in the western city of Innsbruck handed Thomas Plamberger a five-month suspended prison sentence and a €9,400 fine for causing Kerstin Gurtner’s death in January 2025 by gross negligence, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of three years.
The trial has raised questions about the extent of legal liability in the high mountains, an inherently dangerous environment that climbers generally explore at their own risk.
The case is unusual because while climbing accidents are common, prosecutions over them are rare, even in situations like this one where various mistakes were made.
Earlier, Plamberger insisted Kerstin Gurtner told him to leave her and seek help after they were trapped in sub-zero temperatures on the Grossglockner.
It was claimed that he left Gurtner to die on the Grossglockner in January 2025 after making a series of fatal errors before and during their climb.
Plamberger told the court he had climbed the mountain four times before, three times in winter conditions, before their ascent on January 19th, 2025.
They had bad luck on the climb, he said, with a snagged rope costing them about 90 minutes. As night fell, they became trapped in a blizzard just below the 3,798m peak.
“I lay down beside her and she shouted loudly at me: ‘go now, go’, and with that, she saved my life,” said Plamberger, a 37-year-old former soldier from Innsbruck.
“We agreed that I would get help because we knew we would not get through the night up there.”
When he finally reached police by phone at 12.30am he explained that they needed help and that his girlfriend was unable to go on.
“The police officer said no help was possible at night, that we should try to keep moving and try to descend,” said Plamberger, adding he was “endlessly sorry” for his girlfriend’s death.
“I loved her and didn’t want that anything bad happened to her. Kerstin was very strong, used to the mountains, very good in mountain climbing.”
“What I want to say is that I am so terribly sorry,” Plamberger, who pleaded not guilty, told the court.
Prosecutor Johann Frischmann presented charges of negligent manslaughter against Plamberger, arguing he would have known that 6.45pm was too late to reach the summit safely.
The accused failed to pack appropriate emergency equipment, had no food apart from gummy bears and, when he left Gurtner, failed to help her shelter from winds that made it feel like -22 degrees. Prosecutors insisted Plamberger, as the more experienced mountaineer, had a “climb leader” role and thus a higher ethical responsibility for the climb, in particular risk assessment.
Plamberger denies he was climb leader and that he made all decisions together with his late girlfriend. After an 11-month investigation, including forensic investigations of the couples’ phones, key testimony will surround when emergency calls were made – and from where.
Investigators say Plamberger failed to flag down a police helicopter that passed them just before 11pm, then put his phone in silent mode and failed to answer subsequent rescue service calls.
Alpine rescue say the first call they received came at 0.35am and was “unclear”. It was a further three hours before Plamberger informed them fully of the situation.
Plamberger said he didn’t flag down the police helicopter when it passed because they were not yet in serious difficulty.
This changed a short time later when Gurtner became disoriented, he said possibly because of a recent flu.
Plamberger insisted the conditions were good at the outset but deteriorated rapidly as they ascended the peak.
“It was impossible to predict how the wind was in the higher peaks.”
In court on Thursday, defence lawyers read out a letter from the dead woman’s parents, insisting she had acted at her own risk.
“We cannot blame her boyfriend, she’d done mountain runs and managed far more difficult mountains than this one,” they wrote.
In Die Zeit weekly, mother Gertraut Gertner insisted her daughter was experienced in night-time climbs.
“It makes me angry that Kerstin is being portrayed as a naive little thing who let herself be dragged up the mountain,” she added. “I think it’s unfair how Kerstin’s boyfriend is being treated. There’s a witch hunt against him in the media and online.” – Additional reporting Reuters