{"id":746,"date":"2026-06-29T12:08:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=746"},"modified":"2026-06-29T12:08:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:08:46","slug":"no-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=746","title":{"rendered":"No Return"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The judge, Norbert Hofer, was a specialist. At the Innsbruck Regional Court, in western Austria, he oversaw a jurisdiction designated for mountain, avalanche, climbing, cable-car, and ski accidents. Cases handled by this department rarely draw much public attention, but the trial of Thomas Plamberger, in February, was different. He was charged with homicide by gross negligence in the death of his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, during an attempt to climb Grossglockner, Austria\u2019s tallest mountain. On a chilly Thursday morning, the wood-panelled room of Hofer\u2019s court was packed with citizens and a motley press corps.<\/p>\n

Read more At Pacha New York, an Infamous Night Club Is Reborn<\/a><\/p>\n

Word had spread that the judge wanted to run the trial in a single day. There would be no jury. A verdict and, if necessary, a sentence would be delivered by the judge alone. The stage layout was, to an American eye, oddly simple. There was a raised desk, for the judge, with an alcove behind it. Two rows of chairs flanked the forecourt. A small table and a chair, for witnesses, faced the judge\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n

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The judge was a gawky fiftysomething gent in a short-sleeved white shirt and a beige tie, keeping up a conversation with a co-worker as he pulled on his black robe. He had a small mouth, a sharp gaze, and an old-fashioned boy\u2019s haircut. Hofer was an alpinist himself and a mountain-rescue volunteer. He led groups of young people on summer hikes. None of his associations would bias him in any way, he assured us: \u201cI consider myself capable of making decisions with one hundred per cent objectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case against Plamberger was nearly unprecedented. Hundreds of unfortunates\u2014hikers, climbers, skiers, snowboarders\u2014die in the Austrian Alps each year, but these fatalities rarely result in criminal charges. Gurtner, thirty-three, had frozen to death a few dozen yards from the Grossglockner summit after Plamberger, then thirty-six, parted ways with her at around 2 a.m.<\/em> on a winter night. The press coverage in Austria and Germany had been relatively decorous. Reports rarely even gave the climbers\u2019 first names. The world press was less restrained; the Post<\/em>, the Daily Mail<\/em>, the Hindustan Times<\/em>, and many others ran screaming headlines, accompanied by photographs of the climbers purloined from social media. One showed Thomas on a mountaintop, swinging shirtless from a summit cross at the moment of conquest. Another showed Kerstin on a ski slope. Her glove half hid an enormous smile, and her eyes, bright blue, seemed to swallow the world. The image was everywhere in the commentary online, but it wasn\u2019t shown in the courtroom. Judge Hofer announced that he would not be influenced by the \u201cunbelievable media coverage\u201d that the case had received.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Behind the judge\u2019s chair hung a massive crest of an eagle with wings spread, its fierce beak turned stage right. On either side were large monitors, showing the heavy granite pyramid of Grossglockner on a bluebird day. A posse quietly crossed to a set of chairs on the judge\u2019s left: the defendant and his supporters, mostly men. His lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, was a familiar figure\u2014his vast round face was often in the papers. But which of the younger men was Plamberger? Anyone following the case had seen his visage online. But, in the photos, he generally wore reflecting glacier goggles and a climbing helmet. All that showed was dark scruff and a vulpine grin.<\/p>\n

A small, brown-haired man made his way to the table in the forecourt. He wore a blue sports coat, a white shirt, no tie. What happened to the swashbuckling mountaineer whose image had been plastered across the internet? This fellow seemed\u2014not timid, perhaps, but certainly mousy. His back was to the crowd. Austrian law did not oblige him to promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are you?\u201d the judge asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood.\u201d I thought I saw Plamberger put two thumbs up.<\/p>\n

The judge, solicitous, told the defendant that he could take breaks whenever he needed them.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor, Johann Frischman, laid out, in a reedy voice, the criminal complaint. It alleged that Plamberger, acting as \u201cthe responsible guide,\u201d had made nine serious mistakes during the ascent, then left Gurtner alone, \u201cunprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented.\u201d He summited, made his way down to a warming hut on the other side of the mountain, and phoned rescuers from there at about 3:30 a.m.<\/em> When the rescue crew got to the peak, later that morning, they found Gurtner dead.<\/p>\n

Jelinek, who had far more presence and passion than the prosecutor, rejected this story. Gurtner was a strong alpine athlete, he said. She and his client had planned their climbs together as equals. Her death was a \u201ctragic accident.\u201d She had collapsed on the mountain and urged her boyfriend to go for help. Plamberger, devastated by Gurtner\u2019s death, had been \u201calready punished,\u201d because a \u201cprejudgment has taken place in the media,\u201d Jelinek said. Now an innocent man was facing the possibility of three years in prison.<\/p>\n

As the judge\u2019s attention turned toward the defendant\u2019s table, Plamberger made a pre\u00ebmptive declaration. \u201cI am infinitely sorry for what happened and how it happened,\u201d he said. \u201cI loved Kerstin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austrians venerate the Grossglockner. As you enter the main terminal at Salzburg Airport, a large photograph of an idealized \u201cGlockner\u201d hoves into view. Above a green valley, the mountain, steel-gray, looms at otherworldly scale. Wide snowfields surround serrated ridges, and a towering peak jabs the sky. It was first climbed in 1800, and a monument called the Emperor\u2019s Cross went up to mark the summit in 1880. In recent times, the mountain has developed some modern oddities. The whole south side\u2014where most people climb\u2014has surprisingly good cellphone reception. You\u2019re in the wilderness, but you can text your friends or, if you\u2019re in trouble, call for rescue. Grossglockner also has twenty-four-hour \u201cmountain cams,\u201d which people can follow on their laptops from home. There\u2019s not much to see at night, other than fantastically bright stars in an extra-dark sky and an occasional set of headlamps: climbing parties descending late. Climbing Grossglockner has become hugely popular, with an estimated nine thousand people making the ascent each year. The main complaint you see online is that the summit is too crowded.<\/p>\n

Austrians, it seems fair to say, venerate all their mountains, which cover two-thirds of the country. Alpine culture sometimes feels like a national religion. The Austrian Alpine Club bills itself as the country\u2019s largest youth organization, with more than seven hundred thousand members\u2014close to a tenth of the population\u2014assiduously steered toward skiing, hiking, camping, climbing. Competence and bravery can be assumed. So can the provision of mutual aid.<\/p>\n

The Austrian Alps are fantastically photogenic, and the principals in the Plamberger trial had left a detailed record of their time in the mountains on social media. For investigators and for others following the trial, Instagram was a crucial source of information. Austrian privacy laws discourage journalists from asking probing questions, but a quick-witted reporter in Salzburg had retrieved years of Plamberger\u2019s posts, presumably before lawyers could tell him to lock his accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kerstin Gurtner\u2019s account is still up. Scrolling backward through it, you see music festivals, friends, booze jokes from her party days, trips to Italy, Portugal, Greece. But mainly there is an intense romance with the outdoors: lakes, valleys with toylike villages, distant snowy peaks. During the pandemic, she seems to spend every day hiking or trail running. She is not focussed on bagging peaks, though she ends up bagging a few, including a hike in the Glockner range up what she calls her \u201cfirst 3,000er\u201d\u2014a summit higher than three thousand metres. She quotes Sir Martin Conway, a storied British mountaineer: \u201cEach fresh peak ascended teaches something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Instagram is performative. Her Facebook is more workaday. She\u2019s looking for an apartment for a cousin, or trying to find a techie to help run live streams for an events company called brandmood. According to her mother, an eating disorder has begun to plague her, but there are no hints of it, unless you look closely at her shoulders in certain pics. She lives for a time in the ski-resort town of Kitzb\u00fchel, a sort of oom-pah Aspen. Then she moves home to Salzburg, goes to work as a project manager for an events hub. She begins trail running more competitively and volunteers to help organize races. The longer races are brutally hard, but Kerstin loves helping other runners pursue their personal bests.<\/p>\n

In 2024, her social media changes. She starts climbing more serious mountains, doing more technical pitches, and nearly every post includes shots of her in a white helmet. Thomas is teaching her to climb. He leads, she follows, on belay from above. It\u2019s her \u201cbeginner\u2019s course in Alpine climbing,\u201d she writes in March.<\/p>\n

The two had encountered each other, a friend of Kerstin\u2019s told me, at a trail-running event called the Hochk\u00f6nigman, near Maria Alm, a village in the gentle mountains southwest of Salzburg. (Thomas told the judge that they met online.) Kerstin had lived in Maria Alm for several years in her twenties, working for the local tourism office, helping to promote the region\u2019s hiking trails and ski resorts. She ran in the Hochk\u00f6nigman in 2024, placing second among women in the downhill. Thomas first shows up on her Instagram page that February, in an exultant post from a ski area. \u201cDays like these could last forever,\u201d she writes. The images are of snow-heavy trees, a chairlift overhead, and Kerstin grinning with ski goggles lifted. Thomas comments with three lovestruck emojis, and Kerstin replies with two. Somebody has a new boyfriend.<\/p>\n

In the coming months, Kerstin posts photos from the Drachenwand\u2014the \u201cDragon Wall,\u201d overlooking a mountain lake\u2014accompanied by a remix of Nina Simone\u2019s \u201cFeeling Good.\u201d She reaches the summit cross on Hoher Dachstein, a snowy but not difficult climb. After completing a nineteen-pitch sport climb on Trisselwand, she admits to being \u201ca bit proud.\u201d Thomas weighs in: \u201cSuper-strong performance for a first proper multi-rope-length tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over and over, Kerstin thanks Thomas. Her friend from the trail-running world told me that she was happy, perhaps the happiest he had seen her, with her \u201cnew friend.\u201d They did two more big climbs in the fall, including one on the south wall of the Dachstein, which they summited after dark. Kerstin is ecstatic. \u201cA thousand metres of pure climbing bliss,\u201d she posts. \u201cI never would have thought that, after just six months of alpine climbing, I\u2019d be able to climb this entire face.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The route required endurance, and Kerstin had that. Thomas seemed to have everything else\u2014ropes, gear, mountain knowledge, and decades of experience on far harder routes. He had climbed Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn (twice), eleven forbidding Swiss peaks in nine days. Just after ascending the south wall of the Dachstein with Kerstin, he and two friends climbed Grossglockner the hard way, on what Thomas called \u201cthe wild side\u201d\u2014the north face, which gets very little traffic. They ascended three different routes, including the Pallavicini Couloir, a steep line of snow and ice with significant risks of avalanche and rockfall.<\/p>\n

In his Instagram posts, he rhapsodizes, too, but in a different key. He is justifiably proud of his speed and strength. He won a half-marathon in Salzburg and broke the speed record for a frightening round trip along an exposed ridge in Switzerland that crosses four peaks, all more than four thousand metres tall. He collects mottoes like a younger man: \u201cBetter a tiger for a day than a sheep for a thousand days.\u201d His hashtags are #passion and #nevergiveup and #summitclimber. Not long before he and Kerstin began dating, he wrote, \u201cWhat I want is an intense life, and for that, I\u2019m willing to take certain risks. Because if it\u2019s too late, the question will surely come up: why didn\u2019t I even try?\u201d<\/p>\n

Grossglockner\u2019s summit is twelve thousand four hundred and sixty feet above sea level, and there\u2019s nearly always snow and ice in the upper reaches. The elevation gain from the parking lot to the peak is more than six thousand feet. Technically, it\u2019s a relatively easy climb. Still, twenty-nine people have died up there in the past two decades, often from falls. Local rescue crews and their helicopters are kept busy.<\/p>\n

The recommended approach for first-timers is to hire a guide and take two days, spending a night at either of two warming huts while acclimating to the elevation. On the second day, weather permitting, you can make an early run to the summit and descend to a hotel called Lucknerhaus before nightfall. In the summer, the huts are staffed and the meals are famously hearty. In winter, they\u2019re closed, but a few warming rooms\u2014unheated spaces where you can shelter from the wind\u2014remain open.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For less experienced climbers, a guide can be important, for both safety and peace of mind, but it\u2019s not a requirement. Nor is a permit, or filing plans with rangers. Thomas, of course, was not inexperienced. And Grossglockner was his mountain. During the trial, he said that he had climbed it \u201cfourteen or fifteen times.\u201d Based on social media, that looked to be an underestimate.<\/p>\n

Thomas said that he and Kerstin left the parking lot at 6:45 a.m.<\/em> on January 18, 2025. A couple of other parties left around the same time. Several left later. It was a mild day for January, heading into the thirties, with light wind and blue sky. The good weather, plus the fact that it was a Saturday, could account for the traffic. It\u2019s a nearly seven-mile hike to a warming hut known as the St\u00fcdlh\u00fctte, which is near the base of the mountain proper. The trail starts in a glade, crosses a bridge over a creek, then emerges into alpine pasture and scree surrounded by high peaks. At the head of the valley, above a set of glaciers being shrunk by climate change, is Grossglockner.<\/p>\n

The couple fell in with a climber who was going their way. He later appeared in court and said that Thomas and Kerstin were travelling \u201cat a completely normal pace,\u201d although she was trailing behind. She was using a splitboard to make the initial trek across the snowy fields. A splitboard is a kind of snowboard that can be broken into two skis for climbing on snow. It is heavier than touring skis, like the ones Thomas had, and markedly slower on the uphill. But it can be snapped back together and used as a snowboard for descents. For Kerstin, who loved snowboarding, the extra effort was apparently worth it.<\/p>\n

The climber who accompanied them said that Thomas \u201ckept a close eye on her,\u201d sometimes calling back, \u201cAre you O.K.?\u201d The two men went ahead, and \u201cchatted a bit about the mountain world,\u201d the other climber said. They exchanged ideas. \u201cIt was an interesting and a pleasant conversation,\u201d he said. At the St\u00fcdlh\u00fctte, he went right, Kerstin and Thomas left.<\/p>\n

In the witness chair, Thomas said that he and Kerstin had planned to complete their outing in one day, reaching the summit at 9 p.m.<\/em> A group of mountaineers sitting in front of me glanced at one another. Summiting Grossglockner at 9 p.m.<\/em> in midwinter was apparently not done. It meant that the Plamberger party would arrive at the peak after more than fourteen hours of climbing, and still have to descend the whole mountain in the dark. Temperatures would likely be far below freezing.<\/p>\n

But Thomas and Kerstin were not planning to take what\u2019s known as the Normal Route. When they turned left at the St\u00fcdlh\u00fctte, they were committing to a much more difficult ascent, a steep, rocky ridge known as the St\u00fcdlgrat. The St\u00fcdlgrat is a beautiful route, with sweeping views and a striking silhouette: nineteen hundred feet of jagged granite blocks, running all the way to the peak. Unlike the Normal Route, it has a number of sections of technical climbing. It can be faster. From the St\u00fcdlh\u00fctte, the estimated time to the peak is three to five hours. But that\u2019s in summer, and it assumes that people can manage complex running belays: moving roped together through a constantly changing series of iron rings, stakes, and rock outcroppings. In winter, the St\u00fcdlgrat is full of ice and snow, burying much of the fixed gear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was by far the most dangerous climb that Kerstin had ever attempted. Did she know that? All we know is that she trusted Thomas. I suspect, though, that she was keenly aware of his hard-core mountain adventures with his hard-core friends and saw going up the St\u00fcdlgrat in winter as a way for her to cross into that world\u2014to join him where he really lived.<\/p>\n

Mountaineers typically study a route and break it down into timed segments: we must reach this spot by this time, or we\u2019ll have problems later. You always have a Plan B to follow if, for whatever reason, you don\u2019t hit those marks. Turning around is a popular Plan B. It was roughly 10 a.m.<\/em> when Thomas and Kerstin left the hut behind. They would have skied along the edge of the Teischnitzkees glacier for an hour or so, then switched to boots and crampons and started up the ridge.<\/p>\n

The St\u00fcdlgrat gets enough traffic in warmer weather that the authorities have planted a prominent yellow sign at a flat spot known as the Breakfast Place. The sign says, in German and in English, \u201cIf it took you more than 3 hours to get here, turn back! Your life depends on it.\u201d The warning meant three hours from the St\u00fcdlh\u00fctte. It had taken Kerstin and Thomas nearly five hours. In court, Thomas said that they had heavy backpacks. He was not asked why their packs were heavy. He later said that they had no food other than a couple of bags of gummy bears and that he carried little emergency gear. The wind had picked up suddenly. The temperature was dropping.<\/p>\n

During my visit to Austria, I drove up to the Lucknerhaus hotel. At the head of the valley stood the mighty Grossglockner. The weather was clear, the snow fresh and deep. The seductive serenity of the Alps on a sunny day suffused the scene. I heard voices and laughter from farther up the valley. Two men emerged from the trees, gliding on skis down a straight path that they had probably made themselves on the way up. They were middle-aged, not built like athletes. One was in a multicolored sweater, with a ski hat and no backpack. They had clearly legged it up the mountain some distance\u2014half a mile or half a dozen\u2014then turned and skied down, their efforts more than rewarded. They laughed like little boys as they stepped out of their bindings.<\/p>\n

When Thomas told the judge that he and Kerstin were planning to summit at 9 p.m.<\/em>, did he really mean that they planned to spend ten hours just on the St\u00fcdlgrat? Doing what? One of my theories about the last day of Kerstin\u2019s life was that she thought she was going snowboarding. There seemed to be no other way to account for her carrying her splitboard up the mountain. On the day I visited, it looked possible to board down all the way from the upper warming hut, at Adlersruhe, if you took the Normal Route. But Thomas and Kerstin didn\u2019t take that route. Was there any plan that could include summiting via the St\u00fcdlgrat and then descending in daylight? It would be dark before six at that time of year. There are \u00e9lite mountaineers who, starting very early, might manage it. But Kerstin was still a beginner, and their summit goal was 9 p.m.<\/em> Boarding down in the dark would be too dangerous, especially for someone not familiar with the mountain or the glaciers they would be crossing. Thomas knew all this. From the evidence, Kerstin did not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We have no idea, really, what happened between Kerstin and Thomas on the St\u00fcdlgrat. We know that hours passed. We know that the sun went down and that their headlamps became visible on webcams at 6:10 p.m.<\/em> At that point, they had passed a large vertical feature known as the Pulpit but were still hundreds of feet below the summit. We know that Kerstin was trying to climb icy rock in soft snowboard boots, with ill-fitting crampons borrowed from Thomas. Her feet likely slipped many times trying to find a hold, especially after dark. Such slips are exhausting. Each one sends a bolt of panic through the body as it scrambles to regain purchase. We know that, according to Thomas, they had rope problems\u2014a stuck rope, and a pendulum fall by Kerstin. A pendulum fall occurs when a climber loses her hold on the mountain too far to the side of the next fixed point of rope above. It causes a sudden swing that can be terrifying and painful. Crampons sometimes make it worse, catching on rock features. Kerstin had suffered minor injuries, to her hand, her ribs, or perhaps her hip\u2014no one in the courtroom cared to get it straight. Thomas told the judge that she lost a glove, and he loaned her an extra he had. The mountain cams show that their headlamps inched upward till about 8 p.m.<\/em> Then, for the next two hours, they seemed to gain no altitude.<\/p>\n

The weather, meanwhile, kept getting worse. Climbing parties on the Normal Route had turned back earlier in the day. Up on the St\u00fcdlgrat, the wind rose to some forty-five miles an hour, and with the wind chill the temperature felt well below zero. It\u2019s possible that Thomas and Kerstin stopped because she was injured. But failing to keep moving in such brutal cold is the worst possible strategy\u2014the fast lane to hypothermia.<\/p>\n

A couple of hours after dark, a climber descending past the St\u00fcdlgrat saw lights on the ridge and heard voices. He shouted but got no reply. Concerned, he called the Alpine Police, who dispatched a rescue helicopter from Salzburg. The helicopter reached the St\u00fcdlgrat shortly after 10:40 p.m.<\/em> It hovered, rocking in the wind, above the two figures on the exposed ridge. It made six separate passes, looking for the universal distress signal: two arms held up in a V. The climbers never even looked up. This was strange. Plamberger said that he did not react to the helicopter because they were not in a state of emergency. But there is also an arm signal for needing no help, which tells rescuers that, if they\u2019re looking for a party in trouble, they should look elsewhere on the mountain. Instead, Thomas and Kerstin started moving again. My guess is that Thomas was furious. He was proud of his climbing, fiercely proud. He had, to our knowledge, never been rescued in his life.<\/p>\n

The funeral parlor in Salzburg where Kerstin\u2019s memorial service was held\u2014with an invitation for mourners signed by both Kerstin\u2019s family and Thomas\u2014created an online page for condolences. Those poured in, from loved ones and strangers, but the comments had to be watched closely for denunciations of Thomas. The funeral parlor added a plea at the top of the page, in bold: \u201cWe ask you to refrain from accusations and assumptions!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On social media, people did not refrain. There was talk of femicide: \u201cShe trusted him AND he abandoned her. Cruelty thy name is men.\u201d Conversation swirled around the phenomenon of the \u201calpine divorce\u201d\u2014the hike from which only the man returns. Every woman seemed to have a story of being left behind: by the hot-shot boyfriend trying to impress his Facebook buddies, or by the aggrieved husband trying to outrun middle age. The consensus among women was, Make sure you have the car keys.<\/p>\n

Commenters who believed that Thomas was a killer called for \u201cjustice for Kerstin\u201d and \u201cjustice for her family.\u201d The complication was that her family didn\u2019t believe Thomas was guilty. For more than a year after Kerstin\u2019s death, her parents, Gertraud and Helmut Gurtner, had kept silent, making no public statements. Then, just two weeks before the trial, Gertraud spoke with Die Zeit<\/em>, a German weekly, and let fly. \u201cIt makes me angry that Kerstin is being portrayed as a silly little girl who let herself be dragged up the mountain,\u201d she said. The truth was, Kerstin trained hard, and she and Thomas made their decisions together. Kerstin was a serious trail runner: \u201cShe once ran down the Untersberg, our local mountain, in just thirty-eight minutes.\u201d She was a good skier who loved to be in the mountains. \u201cThe death of my daughter was the result of a tragic chain of unfortunate circumstances,\u201d Gertraud said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to blame my daughter\u2019s boyfriend for that.\u201d The pursuit of Thomas in the media and online had become a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gurtners were called to testify in court. Jelinek, Plamberger\u2019s attorney, suggested that their refusal to blame Thomas showed \u201ctrue human greatness.\u201d It also aligned, of course, with his defense. Many observers were shocked by the Gurtners\u2019 support for Thomas, but it didn\u2019t seem strange to me. Whatever the facts of the case, the parents would prefer to believe that their daughter had died pursuing an ambitious dream, and that her boyfriend had loved her.<\/p>\n

As Gertraud took the witness chair, Hofer apologized for calling her in. \u201cUnfortunately, we have no choice,\u201d he said. Gertraud had not been in the courtroom for any of the previous testimony. She was small, brown-haired, not dressed for a special occasion. She did not glance at the public benches.<\/p>\n

The judge was gentle and solicitous with her, as he had been with Thomas. They had both lost a loved one.<\/p>\n

Hofer reviewed a list of mountains that Kerstin had climbed. He noted that it contained no \u201cclassic mixed winter tours,\u201d which means climbing on rock and ice. \u201cCan you help me here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know any, no. I suppose she wasn\u2019t experienced there.\u201d Kerstin hadn\u2019t climbed in winter before.<\/p>\n

Gertraud said that Kerstin had first mentioned climbing Grossglockner in December, 2024. Had they discussed the difficulty of the St\u00fcdlgrat? They had not. Did they consider the difference between soft boots and mountain boots? No.<\/p>\n

The judge asked gently if Kerstin\u2019s strength ever suddenly failed her. \u201cNo,\u201d Gertraud said. \u201cKerstin was a biter\u201d\u2014feisty and tough. \u201cShe never gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cDoes she go to death consciously?\u201d he asked. His question doesn\u2019t translate well, but it meant something like, Would Kerstin have pushed herself until she dropped? Gertraud seemed unfazed. \u201cLet me put it this way,\u201d she said. \u201cShe wouldn\u2019t have been taken up anywhere against her will. I told her, \u2018You can always stop. In an emergency, you make the emergency call.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

The prosecutor had no questions for Gertraud, but Jelinek did. Why had she spoken to Die Zeit<\/em>? The \u201cmedia frenzy\u201d had upset her, she said, and she hoped to reclaim some control. She had also spoken expansively with the reporter about Kerstin\u2019s childhood, her love of the mountains, her independence. \u201cKerstin was very curious, even as a small child,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I told her, \u2018Watch out, there\u2019s a mean fox living back there in the woods, we\u2019re not going there,\u2019 she would go there to take a look.\u201d She said that she was dealing with her grief partly by skiing in Maria Alm, where she and Kerstin had once skied together. And, of course, she opposed the vilification of Thomas. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to be a hero from the comfort of your living room,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The trial was being debated in many forums in the mountaineering world. Some people worried that a guilty verdict would have a broad impact on the sport. Climbers who rope up together learn from one another, with no strict hierarchy. Now recreational climbers might start to think twice about going out with friends. A science writer at the London Times<\/em>, Tom Whipple, objected to \u201cmaking a moral liability a legal one; the fixed ropes of the law bolting themselves to our last cliff face of personal responsibility.\u201d Whipple argued that climbing itself was an act of rampant negligence: risk for no rational purpose. Another climber in the U.K. wrote that \u201cthe foundation of climbing and mountaineering is trust<\/em>\u2014you have to trust yourself and others\u2014and criminalizing these decisions would also be the death of trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

I talked to an experienced mountaineer in his climbing shop in Innsbruck. He told me about first ascents that he and his wife had put up in the Indian Himalayas. He climbed safely with her, but before he was married, he said, he was a wild man. He even attempted Freerider, the monster route in Yosemite that Alex Honnold later climbed without ropes in \u201cFree Solo.\u201d It was a miracle that he had survived his own foolish youth. No, he had not been actively following the Plamberger case. But, as a mountaineer, he disliked the courts\u2019 getting involved in accidents. \u201cPeople always want a culprit when something bad happens,\u201d he said. In a place like Austria, the mountains were the only zone of true freedom and self-reliance. Austria is, at least in the towns and cities, the most neurotically orderly place I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Climbers die at a frightening rate, but the deaths are almost always ascribed to errors and accidents. A disproportionate number of fatalities occur during rappelling. Rappelling is not difficult. You mainly need to remember to have a knot tied at the end of the rope. When someone dies, investigations tend to conclude that someone made a mistake\u2014or that no one made a mistake.<\/p>\n

Kerstin\u2019s death seemed different, though. A well-known mountain guide told me that he and his colleagues had been discussing the case for nearly a year, and that there were simply too many mistakes for it to be called an accident. Certified guides face stricter expectations than other climbers. It is the guide\u2019s job to judge not just mountain conditions but also the clients\u2019 strength and abilities.<\/p>\n

Read more Donald Trump Has Officially Lost the Plot<\/a><\/p>\n

In court, Plamberger denied that he was any kind of guide. He described himself, instead, as a \u201chobby mountaineer,\u201d who had trained himself by watching videos. (He had also climbed with his father, an experienced mountaineer, something he did not mention.) He and Kerstin planned their climbs together, he said: \u201cI wasn\u2019t in charge\u2014I had no authority to give instructions, no power, no superiority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas seems to admire the early alpine first ascenders, at least online. But his relationship with the modern outdoor industry feels vexed. On an Instagram post where a Matterhorn guide advertised his services, Thomas wrote tauntingly, \u201cWhy would I book something like that? I\u2019ll climb it myself.\u201d In 2023, when a skier named Eva Walkner posted about a tremendous day with a film crew on a mountain called Hoher G\u00f6ll, Thomas commented appreciatively, then asked why her party hadn\u2019t gone higher up the face. The footage attached to the post makes it obvious why not: there were massive snow cornices near the top, and the avalanche danger was already considerable where they stopped. What\u2019s not obvious is whether Thomas knew that Eva Walkner is a two-time Freeride World Champion. Her profile has spectacular clips of her flying off terrifying cliffs and skiing out unfazed. Two years later, when Thomas\u2019s name was in the news, Walkner came back to the post and answered his question: \u201cWhy did we turn around just before the summit? Because turning back when conditions become too dangerous is what distinguishes good and experienced alpinists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on Instagram, you can see that Thomas enjoyed taking people up Grossglockner. In the summer of 2022, he climbed it with a young woman named Denise. He was in the foreground of one of her summit pics, and she raved about him in an Instagram post, calling him den besten Bergf\u00fchrer<\/em>\u2014the best mountain guide. In 2023, he did it again, via the St\u00fcdlgrat, with another woman, who also happened to be named Kerstin.<\/p>\n

An accomplished local climber, younger than Thomas, told me that she had declined his invitation to climb together. She and her friends had been wary of him for years. \u201cHe was the person who was always ready to tell you what you were doing wrong, kind of an egotistical person,\u201d she said. \u201cHe roped up with people who were less experienced, people who trusted him.\u201d But, she said, \u201che pushed through some tours the wrong way. It was only a matter of time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Late in the trial, a surprise witness came striding into the courtroom. Her name was Andrea Bergner, and she was clearly not happy to be there. She was tall, slim, dark-haired, stylishly dressed in a gray jacket and a matching skirt. Early thirties. She took the witness chair and answered the judge\u2019s greeting in a loud voice that said, unmistakably, Let\u2019s get this over with. Thomas, whose closed expression had not changed for hours, suddenly looked alarmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was with the defendant\u2014we briefly had a relationship,\u201d Bergner said. \u201cWe also did joint tours.\u201d She meant climbing mountains together. \u201cThe leadership was always my ex-boyfriend.\u201d Some of the tours she could not have managed without him: \u201cI had a certain amount of mountain experience, but he was more experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he take good care of you on tours?\u201d the judge asked, in a distant way. Not solicitous now.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always took good care of me during the tours,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when things got tough, that wasn\u2019t always the case. I was sometimes afraid. In those situations, he tended to get grumpy.\u201d He would tell her, \u201cDon\u2019t be such a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge knew why Andrea had been called. She and Thomas had climbed Grossglockner in 2023. \u201cThe mood was bad,\u201d she said. \u201cI was at the end of my strength. I was dizzy, my headlamp was out. I cried and screamed. I signalled to him, too. Then, suddenly, he was gone\u2014he\u2019d gone ahead.\u201d It was the middle of the night, she said, and she was \u201call alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

She managed to get down off the mountain, but she never went on another tour with the defendant. Her friends advised her to go to the police. \u201cI didn\u2019t do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor asked, \u201cWas this one incident when he left you alone the end of the relationship?\u201d No, she said. They broke up later, \u201cfor various reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The defense had no questions. Andrea stalked out, slamming the door behind her.<\/p>\n

I Googled her afterward. Her Instagram has more than sixty-two thousand followers. Her feed is stuffed with photos of her biking, skiing, climbing, working out, often in outfits from Skinfit, from which her followers can get ten per cent off. She is, in a word, an influencer. Her brand is fearless, fierce. On her page is a slide show of seven ascents of Grossglockner that she made, including one on the daunting northwest ridge. Take that, Plamberger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At 5:22 p.m.<\/em>, when Thomas and Kerstin were still fairly low on the St\u00fcdlgrat, she had dialled \u201c149.\u201d 140 is the 911 of the Austrian Alps. It seems as if Kerstin tried to make an emergency call as the sun went down, fluffing the last number with frozen fingers or a puffy glove. Thomas, asked about the call during the trial, said that he knew nothing about it at the time. If she made the call in secret, communications between the pair must not have been good. Had Thomas got angry because Kerstin wasn\u2019t keeping up, as he allegedly had with his ex?<\/p>\n

They apparently started moving again only when the helicopter arrived. Thomas said that Kerstin denied having called the mountain rescue. \u201cShe also stressed that she was fine.\u201d They kept going, slowly approaching the summit. At one point, he said, \u201cKerstin shouted something up to me four to five times, but I didn\u2019t understand it.\u201d That suggested that he was far ahead, and perhaps didn\u2019t care to be any closer. Climbing alone, he likely could have summited before nightfall and got down off the mountain. But he was not alone, and it is a long-standing practice among climbers for stronger partners to carefully monitor less strong ones, adjusting the pace and objectives to keep them safe.<\/p>\n

Jelinek issued a statement during the police investigation. It said, inter alia, that, after the helicopter\u2019s visit, Kerstin had \u201csuddenly showed increasing signs of exhaustion,\u201d which was \u201ccompletely surprising and objectively unforeseeable\u201d for his client. But that\u2019s not how exhaustion typically works during a seventeen-hour climb in frigid weather. Weakness, frostbite, and the early stages of hypothermia are obvious long before a reasonably fit person collapses. Jelinek also criticized the response time of the Alpine Police\u2014a strategic mistake. In Austria, mountain rescuers are heroic figures beyond reproach.<\/p>\n

At 12:35 a.m.,<\/em> Thomas made a phone call. It is not clear whether he was near Kerstin. There were no headlamps visible on the mountain at that point. He had been contacted by an Alpine Police officer identified in court as Mathias A., who had fielded the earlier emergency call that sent the helicopter to the St\u00fcdlgrat. He had identified Thomas from the license plates on the only car still parked in the Lucknerhaus lot, then left a series of messages on his phone. Now Thomas was calling back. Mathias asked why they had not acknowledged the helicopter. Because everything was fine, Thomas told him. What about now? \u201cWe don\u2019t need anything here, it\u2019s all right,\u201d he said, according to Mathias. After the call, Mathias was worried. He messaged Thomas, \u201cDo you need help???\u201d No reply. He texted again and again, but Thomas had silenced his phone. In court, he said he was trying to save battery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What happened to Kerstin as they approached the summit of Grossglockner? The mountain cams showed a blob of headlamp light near the summit at midnight, above the last rocky section on the St\u00fcdlgrat. The terrain changes there. It\u2019s a snowy trudge, steep at first, to the Empire Cross. At that hour, the cams snapped photos every thirty minutes. In the image from twelve-thirty, there were no headlamps visible. The judge had a note in his file, saying that after Kerstin\u2019s alleged collapse she \u201ccould only move on all fours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas did not confirm or deny that. He said, \u201cIt was a completely exceptional situation for both of us.\u201d And: \u201cIt was bitterly cold. We wanted to have tea, but it was all frozen.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that difficult to prepare for serious cold. When Kerstin started doing more mountain hiking, back in 2020, her mother asked her to get a bivouac bag\u2014a lightweight emergency sleeping bag that is standard gear for mountaineers. She agreed, and also got aluminum rescue blankets and a first-aid kit. Thomas said in court that he knew Kerstin had a bivouac bag. She also had a rescue blanket and hand warmers. He himself did not have a bivouac bag, though. \u201cI don\u2019t own one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This was a weird confession. The bags weigh very little, can be bought for less than twenty euros, and save lives regularly. Pairs of hikers often carry double bivvies, as they\u2019re known, to share warmth. Thomas surely knew the risks of exposure in the alpine. Was it just some mountain-man obtuseness\u2014that he believed he would never be in an emergency he couldn\u2019t handle? I asked Nicola Werdenigg, who was among the first women to become certified winter-climbing guides in Austria, what she thought. \u201cThese are not mountaineers,\u201d she said, sadly.<\/p>\n

The judge said that he couldn\u2019t understand why, when Thomas phoned Mathias at twelve-thirty-five, he did not tell him that there was an emergency. Thomas said that, during the call, he didn\u2019t know that Kerstin was unable to go on. This was a flat contradiction of something he\u2019d said earlier\u2014that he\u2019d told Mathias that she urgently needed help.<\/p>\n

The judge asked why Thomas didn\u2019t call Mathias back when he noticed that Kerstin couldn\u2019t move: \u201cThat would have been the most basic piece of information. You should know that as a mountaineer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI thought I had set the rescue chain in motion with this call.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t Thomas unpack the bivouac bag from her backpack, the thermal blanket? His explanation was that he\u2019d forgotten in the stress of the moment: \u201cI didn\u2019t even think about the bivouac bag.\u201d He added, \u201cI don\u2019t know why she didn\u2019t say anything to me about it.\u201d So the oversight was her fault. She was hypothermic, but she should have said something.<\/p>\n

Thomas testified that, sometime around 2 a.m.<\/em>, \u201cI agreed with her that I would go get help. Because we knew that we wouldn\u2019t make it through the entire night up there. I lay down beside her, and she then screamed loudly, \u2018Go! Now! Go!\u2019 She saved my life with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge seemed to have reached the end of his patience with Thomas. He pulled up a photograph of Kerstin as the rescue crew had found her. She was not curled in a ball against the wind, as one might expect. She was braced against a near-vertical gray rock on a steep part of the mountain, with her back unnaturally arched and her face pointed at the sky, eyes open. Her feet dangled, her boots untied. There was certainly no room to lie down beside her there. Her gloves were gone. Her heavy pack was still on her back. She was a vision of agony.<\/p>\n

Thomas had said that he \u201csecured\u201d Kerstin before leaving her. In climbing, one secures oneself or a partner to the mountain in order to free one\u2019s hands for other tasks. But he had told the rescue crew that he had left her on an area of gently sloping snow, in view of the summit cross. This was nowhere near that snowy area. She was in a fall zone, tied tight to the rock from behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could she get into such a position when she couldn\u2019t move anymore?\u201d the judge asked. \u201cI find it difficult to reconcile your version of events with the images I have before me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas sat in silence. His expression had not changed.<\/p>\n

The judge speculated about how Kerstin might have reached this perilous spot if Thomas had secured her near the summit: she could have untied herself, put her backpack on, climbed down, then fallen. But, he suggested, perhaps there was a better explanation. He invited Thomas to offer one. Thomas said nothing. Jelinek hastily asked for a ten-minute break, and the judge granted it.<\/p>\n

When the proceedings resumed, Thomas faced the judge and delivered a statement, seemingly rehearsed: \u201cI understand you and the scenario you\u2019re considering, but I didn\u2019t leave Kerstin behind at that point. I want to make that very clear.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He may have meant that Kerstin had ordered him to go ahead, or that he had not left her behind in his heart, or perhaps he was sticking to his story about leaving her somewhere else. In any event, the judge let it go. When Jelinek asked his client about Kerstin\u2019s condition when he last saw her, he said, \u201cShe was completely finished.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I thought I was in a fake movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Lucknerhaus mountain cam, headlamps reappeared at 1:30 a.m.<\/em> below the summit\u2014by the looks of it, just where Kerstin was found. At 2:30 A.M.<\/em>, Thomas can be seen descending on the Normal Route. There is no light at Kerstin\u2019s resting spot. Thomas said that he had a difficult descent. He threw up, twice. But his headlamp moved swiftly across rocks and ice, and by about 3 a.m.<\/em> he was speeding down the slope, presumably on skis.<\/p>\n

The Alpine Police were still trying to reach him, but his phone remained silenced, filling up with missed calls and messages. Sometime after three, he reached a high-altitude warming hut, the Archduke-Johann-H\u00fctte*,*{: .small} and phoned Mathias A. again. There was initially some confusion, Mathias testified: \u201cI thought at first that everything was fine. But then he told me that he left his girlfriend on the Glockner.\u201d Mathias immediately went into rescue mode, assembling a crew. Apparently, he asked Thomas to return to Kerstin\u2019s position, but Thomas said no, he needed to rest.<\/p>\n

The rescue helicopter battled with the wind and had to drop the crew on a snowfield nearly two thousand feet below the summit. They trudged up with their equipment and reached Kerstin at 10 a.m.<\/em> Members of the crew testified that her body was not where Thomas had said it would be. Mathias, who had assisted with the morning rescue, mentioned bloodstains above where they found her. The judge asked if it looked like Kerstin had fallen down the slope. \u201cNo, not really,\u201d Mathias said. But these were not forensic scientists. They were there to recover a body, and it was a difficult operation\u2014slippery, windy, very cold, across a narrow ridge. They got her into a red rescue coffin, then rappelled with it hundreds of metres down to the helicopter.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Thomas had got a helicopter ride off the mountain. A police officer from the town of Lienz questioned him and found that he was \u201crather taciturn\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0but he was able to answer clearly.\u201d Thomas said that his girlfriend had struggled on the St\u00fcdlgrat. She was less experienced. He was the leader. Had he protected her with a bivouac bag? \u201cHe couldn\u2019t answer that,\u201d the inspector told the court. Why had he been in the warming hut and not lying in a bivouac bag with his girlfriend? \u201cThat didn\u2019t quite add up for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Thomas phoned the police to ask if they had by chance found his GoPro on the mountain. They had not. That seemed like a tacky inquiry, but it\u2019s possible that Thomas was relieved by the answer. He often wore the GoPro on his climbing helmet, to film while in the mountains. That footage might have answered many questions about the hours they\u2019d spent on the St\u00fcdlgrat\u2014what was said where, whether the two of them were arguing or even speaking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Big, fat snowflakes had started falling in the afternoon, past the high courtroom windows. The valleys and peaks around Innsbruck were already on high avalanche alert. Now it was dark. The judge retired to make his decision. There was, first, the question of guilt, and then, if necessary, sentencing.<\/p>\n

Grossly negligent homicide, under the Austrian criminal code, means that someone has caused a death by acting \u201cin an unusual and conspicuously negligent manner.\u201d Nothing about intent\u2014intent pertains to murder in its several degrees. The judge had to weigh this charge against everything he had heard.<\/p>\n

I pictured him also fretting about being branded a Nestbeschmutzer<\/em>\u2014a \u201cnest fouler\u201d\u2014if his decision was seen to besmirch the image of mountaineering. That was the term widely used against social critics, artists, novelists\u2014anyone in Austria who dared to be too critical of the country after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

In truth, Hofer betrayed no world-historical timidity. Only, perhaps, a constitutional aversion to thinking ill of mountaineers. In a 2020 journal article, he\u2019d written, \u201cCulpable conduct can be intentional or negligent. Since intentional conduct\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0plays virtually no role in alpine accidents, the focus is on examining whether negligent conduct led to the accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were many disturbing parts of Kerstin\u2019s story left unpursued. The autopsy had yielded an official cause of death: hypothermia. There were signs of a viral infection, and she had taken ibuprofen. But nothing was said about her injuries, even though Thomas had mentioned them. Mathias had described bloodstains. Whose? From what wound? Why had Thomas and Kerstin taken the St\u00fcdlgrat? That was a central question, never asked. Where were their headlamps after midnight? Extreme cold drains batteries, but at least one headlamp was back on at 1:30 a.m.<\/em> How did Kerstin end up where she was found? Did Thomas lead her there or find her there? Why on earth was she still wearing her backpack?<\/p>\n

The prosecutor and the judge may have left all these questions alone because they knew that they had enough to convict for grossly negligent homicide. This case was already out in new territory. It didn\u2019t need to flail on any further.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Another question: Would Thomas have been prosecuted if his deceased partner had been a man, with all other details the same? That was hard to picture. But Kerstin was, as her mother said, not a fool. She was physically and mentally strong. She made it to the top of Grossglockner, if not quite to the cross, in a raging winter storm, with bad boots, a heavy bag, no real food, not much experience, possibly an injury, and very probably a cold and angry boyfriend.<\/p>\n

At one point, while being pressed by the judge, Thomas claimed that he took off Kerstin\u2019s backpack and urged her to sit on it. I didn\u2019t believe him. He\u2019d done nothing else to make her comfortable. And if the backpack were beneath her she would have been sitting on her bivouac bag, emergency blanket, and hand warmers, which could have saved her life. All they would have had to do was reach inside the pack.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that, as the judge suggested, Kerstin set off blindly in the dark, making her way as far as the rocks where she was found. People dying of hypothermia suffer extreme confusion and sometimes feel a painful rush of blood to their extremities, causing them to shed clothes before they fall into a coma, their organs fail, and their heart stops. But someone was lucid enough to tie the knot that secured her to the mountain. That photograph showed no evidence of any effort to save her. Instead, she was thrust up into the killing wind.<\/p>\n

The judge came back with a verdict: guilty.<\/p>\n

He explained at some length. He was discounting a number of the mountaineering errors (starting too late, not carrying sufficient emergency gear), because they were not inherently responsible for Kerstin\u2019s death. He praised Plamberger\u2019s abilities\u2014\u201cYou are an excellent alpinist\u201d\u2014and spoke sympathetically of the torments inflicted on him and his family by social media. \u201cI don\u2019t see you as a murderer,\u201d he said. \u201cI see you as someone who, as a last resort, tried to call for help and stand by his girlfriend.\u201d Thomas had been unable to put Kerstin in a safe position because she was unable to proceed. He had gone ahead to Adlersruhe \u201cnot to save yourself\u201d but to find help. There just wasn\u2019t any.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This all sounded promising for the defense\u2014and would weigh in Thomas\u2019s favor when it came to sentencing. His guilt stemmed from the fact that, despite his excellence, \u201cyou are obviously someone who is struggling to make the switch from your own skills to another\u2019s.\u201d He did not recognize the exhaustion of his partner when he should have. None of the climbing he had done with her before should have made him think she could go up the St\u00fcdlgrat in winter. He let her climb with inadequate equipment. He did not turn back at the Breakfast Place. \u201cHad you acted differently, I strongly assume that your partner would have survived,\u201d the judge said. The requirements for a finding of gross negligence were fulfilled \u201cdue to the cumulative circumstances.\u201d There was also Kerstin\u2019s \u201ccontributory negligence\u201d\u2014she could have made an emergency call herself.<\/p>\n

For sentencing, the mitigating factors included Thomas\u2019s \u201cclean record and previously orderly life style.\u201d The loss of his loved one was also taken into account. The judge gave him a five-month suspended sentence\u2014likely no jail time, in other words\u2014and a fine of nine thousand six hundred euros. The verdict, Hofer said, almost apologetically, \u201cwas the decision of a single judge at the Regional Court. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s right.\u201d Thomas had the option to appeal.<\/p>\n

Thomas frowned and looked at Jelinek. They would appeal.<\/p>\n

It was nearly midnight. Thomas had to get back to Salzburg for his shift the next day. He was a cook at a retirement home there.<\/p>\n

Peter Habeler, who is Austria\u2019s greatest living mountaineer\u2014he summited Everest without oxygen along with Reinhold Messner, among many other accomplishments\u2014was interviewed for a public-television documentary about the tragedy on Grossglockner. Habeler is in his eighties, still tanned and climbing. He had trenchant things to say about poor judgment and, when a question came about Thomas leaving Kerstin on the mountain, his gaze hardened and he switched to strongly accented English. \u201cThat is a no go<\/em>,\u201d he said, twice. Never mind what the courts said. Thomas had broken a basic code of the mountains.<\/p>\n

The argument went on after the trial. Back home, I couldn\u2019t shake the Instagram habit. I looked at Andrea Bergner\u2019s page and understood why she had been so angry in court. This burst of publicity was all wrong for her\u2014she was cast as a victim, which was so<\/em> off brand. The day after the trial, she was already up in the deep powder west of Innsbruck, looking like a million bucks. Some of her commenters knew about her ex-boyfriend. Under a series of shots of her on a scary ice climb, a follower wrote, \u201cGlad Plamberger didnt kill u as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Thomas couldn\u2019t shake the habit, either. I stumbled on a Facebook post from before the trial, when his accounts were supposed to be closed. He had free-soloed the Aschenbrenner, he announced. That\u2019s a steep route, much of it usually solid ice, on the north face of Grossglockner. It was \u201ca brilliant climb,\u201d he wrote. Most of the photos were selfies. The pirate king of the Eastern Alps was still out there, killing it with his vulpine grin. The soundtrack was \u201cAll Eyez on Me,\u201d by Tupac Shakur\u2014pure id, unstoppable, a lady\u2019s man, not fazed by courts or prison. \u201cLive the life of a thug n\u2014\u2014 \/ Until the day I die \/ Live my life as a boss playa \/ All eyez on me.\u201d So that was the music playing in the brain of the mousy defendant. And he was right. He got away with it.<\/p>\n

Two weeks after Plamberger\u2019s conviction, a young woman named Hannah posted a photo of herself on the summit of Grossglockner in morning sunshine. She wore stiff green touring boots and crampons with spikes like black daggers. Thomas applauded her achievement. This was still his mountain, and he liked to let women know it.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more How a Mass Shooting Shattered Australia\u2019s Political Consensus<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple\u2014an experienced mountaineer and his girlfriend, a novice\u2014set out to climb Austria\u2019s tallest mountain. She died near the summit. Was it a case of \u201calpine divorce\u201d? 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