An experienced mountaineer has been found guilty of negligent manslaughter for leaving behind his girlfriend on the Grossglockner, Austria’s highest mountain, where she subsequently died.
After a 14-hour hearing, an Innsbruck court handed Thomas Plamberger a five-month suspended sentence and a fine of €9,600 over the fateful ascent on January 19th, 2025.
“If you had acted differently, I strongly believe that your partner would have survived,” said Judge Norbert Hofer in his ruling. He said Plamberger was “galaxies away” from his partner in terms of climbing condition.
Plamberger told the court he had climbed the mountain four times before, three times in winter conditions, before their ascent on January 19th. He blamed the tragedy on poor weather conditions and bad luck, 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’. 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 his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, was unable to go on.
The judge said Plamberger, as de facto climb leader, made a series of poor decisions. Crucially, he failed to turn around even as darkness fell, the wind rose and his girlfriend discreetly tried to call mountain rescue.
Plamberger said 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.”
Prosecutor Johann Frischmann presented charges of negligent manslaughter against Plamberger.
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 insist 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 he 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 surrounded when emergency calls were made – and from where.
Investigators said 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 said the first call they received came at 12.35am 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 because 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 Gurtner’s parents: “We cannot blame her boyfriend, she’d done mountain runs and managed far more difficult mountains than this one,” they wrote.
In German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, mother Gertraud Gurtner insisted the couple were 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.