A seasoned Alpine climber has been charged with manslaughter after he left his girlfriend on Austria’s highest mountain, the Grossglockner, before she froze to death.
Thomas Plamberger and Kerstin Gurtner were just 50m away from the 3,798m (12,460ft) summit when she fell sick, suffering from exhaustion and disorientation, according to the Innsbruck public prosecutor’s office.
Mr Plamberger decided to leave her at 2am on Sunday 19 January this year and descend to the nearest mountain hut to seek help, only returning six and a half hours later in the morning to find her dead.
Gurtner, 33, froze to death alone on the mountain after she was left in -8C temperatures, with winds of up to 45mph contributing to “feels like” temperatures as low as -20C.
Prosecutors undertook an 11-month investigation into the incident and examined the couple’s mobile phones, sports watches, and photographs of their climb, as well as commissioning an independent report from an Alpine mountaineering expert.
They have now charged Mr Plamberger with negligent manslaughter, arguing that he made nine key mistakes that led to Gurtner’s death, from not planning the expedition properly to failing to make contact with search teams and police.
Mr Plamberger has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyer has previously rejected part of the Innsbruck prosecutors’ timeline of events. He has said he left Gurtner on the mountain “by mutual agreement”.
Prosecutors say the couple set off two hours too late in the morning of 18 January to realistically summit Grossglockner and return safely.
They effectively became stranded by stormy weather at approximately 8.50pm, but prosecutors allege that Mr Plamberger made no attempts to call for help and did not issue any distress signals to a police helicopter that flew over their position at 10.50pm.
Police tried to call Mr Plamberger multiple times before he called on officer back at 00.35am. The prosecutor’s office said the contents of the call remained “unclear” but that Mr Plamberger then put his phone on silent and no further contact was made.
“At approximately 2am, the defendant left his girlfriend unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented about 50m below the summit cross of the Grossglockner. The woman froze to death,” the statement said.
“Since the defendant, unlike his girlfriend, was already very experienced with alpine high-altitude tours and had planned the tour, he was to be considered the responsible guide of the tour,” it added.
The Grossglockner is the highest mountain peak in Austria and considered one of the most challenging climbs in the Austrian Alps, requiring full climbing and glacier gear.
Yet police said Mr Plamberger allowed his girlfriend to use a splitboard – a snowboard that can be divided into two parts to be used like skis for climbing – and soft snowboard boots, gear that prosecutors said was unsuitable for their high-alpine winter route.
He also allegedly failed to move his girlfriend to a position where she would be sheltered from the wind or to give her their bivouac sleeping bag or aluminium foil blankets to keep her warm before he left.
Prosecutors said the woman was inexperienced and had never undertaken an alpine high-altitude tour of this length, difficulty, and altitude.
In a series of posts on his now-deleted Instagram, Mr Plamberger said Gurtner’s death was “hurting so much”.
“I miss you so much. It hurts so incredibly much. Forever in my heart. Without you, time is meaningless”, he wrote on social media, and co-signed the obituary her parents wrote, according to Bild.
Tributes on Gurtner’s page since her death have described her as a “beloved daughter , sister, sister-in-law, godmother, granddaughter, partner and friend”.
“Thank you, dear Kerstin, for being you, for being you, and for your soul always will be. Thank you for the mark you left not only on me, but on so many others. Through you, you live on here as well,” a friend of Gurtner wrote.
