More than a year after a 33-year-old woman froze to death on Austria’s highest mountain, her boyfriend goes on trial on Thursday accused of gross negligent manslaughter.
Kerstin G died of hypothermia on a mountain climbing trip to the Grossglockner that went horribly wrong. Her boyfriend is accused of leaving her unprotected and exhausted close to the summit in stormy conditions in the early hours of 19 January 2025, while he went to get help.
The trial has sparked interest and debate, not just in Austria but in mountain climbing communities far beyond its borders.
Unless he tied her and dragged her up the mountain or broke her legs before leaving her there I don’t see how he is any more responsible than she is.
My ex used to claim they could do X or Y task and I would make arrangements under the assumption they knew what they were talking about.
We’d get to the point they would need to utilise said skill, and they’d turn to me and say actually I thought I could wing it but I can’t, you’re going to have to do this now.
If I’d been told at the start that they didn’t know, I would have spent more time investigating the situation and upskilled myself in preparation. Instead, I’d ask “Do we have everything we need? Does this look good?”, get told it’s fine - and it wasn’t.
The lady in the article may well have deferred to his expertise when asking if she was adequately prepared, and trusted his judgement over a quick Dr Google search.
It’s perfectly understandable in many different situations but climbing the highest peak in Austria is not one of them. A normal person would go for an easy hike first, do some multiday hiking next, do some winter hiking, do some multiday winter hiking and at the same time climb ~2000m peak, climb ~3000m peak and then try climbing 3.700m peak in winter. You can skip some steps if you feel comfortable and someone with more experience helps you but if you find yourself in a situation that’s completely beyond what you can manage it’s on you. Normal person should also understand the difference between professional mountain guide and just another climber. As you said, people can lie and you can never put absolute trust in someone.
And yes, I can imagine a fucked up scenario where the guy manipulates her and intentionally puts her in a situation she can’t handle but for me it’s closer to situation like romance fraud than to criminal negligence. You would have to prove that he gaslighted her, presented her with false information and otherwise manipulated her over extended period of time to build trust with the purpose of killing her. If you can’t prove that then we’re talking about two consenting adults doing something dangerous and one of them dying.
‘Her social media feed suggests she was a keen mountaineer and her mother has told German media that she loved mountain hiking at night.’
Not even her mother claims she is a rookie it seems, only the prosecutors.
I don’t know. I’ve seen some people take their friends into some pretty dangerous situations then had to limp out their injured scared friends while they continue off and enjoy themselves on their adventure. As a quick scenario to highlight that aspect, if you agree to drink a beer but it’s poison, you agreed but you were misled
That’s not “misleading” someone. That’s poisoning which is straight murder.
If I told you to do base jumping with me and that it’s easy and safe, would you jump? I imagine not (unless you actually do base jumping) because you would immediately recognize it’s crazy. If I told you to climb the highest peak in Austria during winter with me you should also be able to evaluate if it’s beyond your ability or not. If it was achievable than neither of them could predict what will happen and it was an accident. If it was clearly too dangerous for her she should be able to recognize it.
It’s obviously more than a binary choice. I’m not saying he is guilty here, just that it’s possible.
Have you done much climbing or much outdoors? What you say sounds intuitive but if you have someone more experienced that isn’t paying attention to the others and overconfident then they can quickly drag inexperienced people with a little trust or too much fear to speak out into situations those people can’t easily get out of alone. If there is someone leading they carry some responsibility for that and some people are reckless and misleading about it to the point I think the poison story isn’t that far off of equivalent
This is 100% true but there’s difference between moral responsibility and legal one. If you hire a professional guide then they are legally responsible for you. If you have an accident while under their care they will have to prove that what happened was impossible to prevent. If the accident happened because they made a mistake it’s on them. Legally.
If I go hiking with a group of friends it’s completely different. I can be by far the most experienced one but everyone understands that we’re are all equal members. They can ask me for recommendations but I can’t give them any orders. If something happens I can feel guilty and everyone can be mad at me but legally speaking I wasn’t responsible for anyone.
As I said, for me it’s crazy to claim negligent here because he was not responsible for her. You can claim manslaughter (imagine we’re driving in the middle of nowhere in winter, I tell to get out for a moment and abandon you. That’s murder) or some sort of fraud (imagine I convince you I’m a professional mountain guide, show you false papers, claim I climbed Mt Everest and so on but I have no idea about climbing. and I did it in order to lure you into high mountains and abandon you). If they can prove something like this happened he’s guilty. If it’s just about being the more experienced one thus being legally responsible it’s bullshit.
Current news cycle seems to be saying he something similar before. Do you still hold your position?
I never said he should be charged for manslaughter just that it seems unreasonable to completely discount it, especially by overemphasising her responsibility over his
I was referring to the news accusing him of “gross negligent manslaughter”.
And yes, I still think that negligence doesn’t make sense here. He wasn’t legally responsible for anyone. He either murdered someone or he committed some sort of fraud.
Honestly, I think it’s just sexist. I remember controversies around Adam Bielecki. He went climbing in the Alps with his friend and came back alone. He claimed they went as partners but some people suspected he was paid to go as a guide. There were no prosecution or anything even though he was way more experienced. The questions was always “was he there as a guide?”. This wasn’t obvious so there was no trial. Then he climbed Broad Peak with a climber that was for the first time in Himalayas. Bielecki went down faster, left the other guy alone and the guy died. And obviously there was no trial. There were some moral questions around it, a lot of hate for Bielecki from the climbing community but no one was even thinking about a trial. The other guy knew where he was going. I think here they are trying to make this guy responsible only because it was his girlfriend. If this happened to a pair of male climbers they would just say the guy is a bad climbing partner and no one should climb with him. But maybe I’m taking this too far…
OK, let’s prosecute her as well then.