An Austrian court on Thursday fined a man and suspended his five-month sentence after finding him guilty of negligence in his climber girlfriend’s death amid wintry conditions while climbing Grossglockner Mountain in January 2025. Photo by Helmut Fohringer/EPA
An Austrian man received a suspended five-month sentence and a $11,312 fine for negligence causing his girlfriend’s climbing death, an Austrian court ruled.
The defendant, identified as Thomas P, 37, due to Austria’s privacy laws, was convicted Thursday for refusing help and eventually leaving his girlfriend, Kersten G, 33, behind while climbing Austria’s tallest peak, Grossglockner Mountain, on Jan. 19, 2025. She died from hypothermia.
Innsbruck Regional Court Judge Norbert Hofer presided over the case that lasted one day and told the convicted climber that he erred in taking Kersten G climbing as winter weather was moving across the mountain.
“I don’t see you as a murderer; I don’t see you as cold-hearted,” Hofer told the defendant, as reported by the BBC.
The court cited “mitigating factors” in suspending Thomas’ sentence in a statement to the news outlet. Those factors included his clean record and that he lost someone who was close to him.
Subsequent public discussion on social media incriminated him, the court added.
Hofer is a skilled climber who participates in mountain and helicopter rescues in the Tyrol area of western Austria and described Thomas P as an experienced climber whose skills greatly exceeded Kersten’s.
When the winter conditions set in, Hofer said the pair should have turned around due to her lack of winter climbing experience. Instead, he told a helicopter team via radio that the pair were okay and did not need help.
The couple was about 164 feet beneath the mountain’s summit when Kersten became incapacitated along an exposed ridge due to exhaustion and hypothermia amid high winds.
Thomas told the court he left her behind to find help, but he had no explanation for why he did not wrap her in the emergency blanket in her pack or protect her with a bivouac bag.
Rescuers found her body hanging upside down from a climbing rope and along a rockface, which Hofer said suggests she might have fallen after Thomas left her behind.
The rescuers found Kersten’s warming blanket and bivouac bag in her pack after bringing her down from the mountain.
One of the rescuers told the court they were surprised to find her body still suspended in the air and said that if the 45 mph winds were any stronger, her body likely would have fallen.
Prosecutors said the wind chill on the mountain was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chill was about -4 degrees.
Prosecutors said Thomas was the “responsible guide” for the climbing excursion and faulted him for not turning around, not calling for help and not sending a distress signal when a police helicopter flew over the couple at 10:30 p.m. local time.
He left Kersten alone at 2 a.m. on Jan. 19 to climb over the summit and descend the mountain from there to get help.
His defense attorney argued that Kersten was an experienced climber and aware of the risks of climbing Austria’s tallest peak.
During the trial, a former girlfriend said Thomas similarly left her alone as she was undergoing extreme stress while climbing the same mountain in 2023.
Thomas is a resident of Salzburg, and Grossglockner Mountain is the second-tallest in the Alps at 12,460 feet.
