Innsbruck, Austria, Feb 20, (dpa/GNA) – A 37-year-old man in Austria has been handed a five-month suspended sentence, and a fine for gross negligence resulting in his girlfriend’s death, during a climb on the country’s highest mountain, a judge ruled on Thursday.
In January 2025, the couple set off together to climb the peak of the Grossglockner mountain. After midnight, the 33-year-old woman froze to death alone in bad weather just below the 3,798-metre summit, after her partner left her there while attempting to seek help.
At the beginning of the trial, the defendant addressed the judge with an emotional statement. He said he was “infinitely sorry for what happened and how it happened.” He did not plead guilty before the Innsbruck Regional Court.
The prosecution accused the man of leaving his partner “defenceless, exhausted, hypothermic and disoriented.” They charged him with grossly negligent homicide, alleging that he made a series of serious mistakes. The verdict is not yet final.
The prosecutor spoke of inadequate planning and equipment, of a failure to turn back despite icy winds, and accused the man of alerting the rescue services far too late.
The judge said the experienced climber showed no regard for the fact that his girlfriend had never undertaken such a challenging winter climb before. “She went on until her death,” the judge said, noting that by the end she was crawling on all fours.
He added that the defendant had also provided his girlfriend with inappropriate equipment. On the mountain, he failed to respond properly as the weather deteriorated and she struggled to keep going, and he did not abandon the climb in time.
An ex-girlfriend of the defendant testified, that he had once left her alone on another route on the Grossglockner because she was progressing too slowly, and because the two had argued about the route. “Then he was suddenly gone,” she said.
“It was the middle of the night, my headlamp had gone out, I was at the end of my tether,” the witness said.
The judge concluded that the 37-year-old clearly struggles to reconcile his own high level of skill with the abilities of others.
On Thursday, the defendant said his girlfriend was an enthusiastic mountaineer and very athletic. “We always planned the climb together and made decisions together,” he said, contrary to earlier statements describing himself as the person responsible for the climb.
He said he had taught himself mountaineering through practice and online videos but had never taken a course. The woman’s parents described their daughter during the trial as extremely strong-willed.
An expert witness in mountaineering also testified during the trial. While he described the defendant as a highly skilled and experienced climber, he listed numerous errors, describing the man’s poor communication with rescue teams and deficient rope-handling skills as “inadequate,” “incomprehensible” and “absolutely incompetent.”
According to data from the Austrian Alpine Safety Board, around 8,400 accidents occur on average in the Austrian mountains each year, resulting in almost 300 deaths. Many of the fatalities are due to cardiovascular disease or falls, with deaths from frostbite or exhaustion appearing extremely rarely in the statistics.
Few mountain accidents end up in court because the judiciary emphasizes personal responsibility when it comes to mountaineering, alpine expert and former public prosecutor Robert Wallner told dpa.
However, in the Grossglockner trial, the prosecution argued that the defendant was effectively acting as a mountain guide due to his greater level of experience, and therefore had a special duty of care.
GNA