The story that reporter Shane Galvin describes in the New York Post doesn’t sound like a mountaineering mishap so much as a slow-motion disaster that multiple people saw coming and nobody stopped.
According to Galvin, 33-year-old Kerstin Gurtner died less than 150 feet from the summit of Grossglockner, Austria’s highest peak, after her boyfriend and climbing partner, 39-year-old Thomas Plamberger, left her behind in brutal winter conditions on the night of January 18–19.
Prosecutors in Innsbruck now accuse Plamberger of negligent homicide, alleging that as the more experienced climber and de facto guide, he walked away from an exhausted, hypothermic partner and left her to freeze to death near the summit.
Psychologist and true-crime YouTuber Dr. Todd Grande, who broke down the incident in a long video analysis, calls the case “a mountain-climbing disaster that highlights the dangers of not respecting nature” and says, based on what is known publicly, he believes Plamberger is guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.
A High-Risk Ascent In Winter Darkness
Galvin reports that Gurtner and Plamberger set out to climb Grossglockner on January 18, taking on a 12,000-plus-foot route in temperatures around –4°F and high winds near Austria’s highest summit.
Dr. Grande fills in the technical details. He says Grossglockner rises to about 12,461 feet and is rated a moderate-to-difficult alpine climb, with sharp ridges, sudden weather shifts, and an exposed summit ridge that normally demands crampons, ropes and ice axes.
For experienced mountaineers, he notes, a winter ascent and descent typically takes 10 to 12 hours.
According to Grande, the pair were already behind before they gained any real altitude. They reportedly planned to start at 4:45 a.m. but did not actually begin their climb until about 6:45 a.m., putting them on a schedule that would likely keep them on the mountain right at or after nightfall even in perfect conditions.
The conditions that day were far from perfect. Grande says the temperature hovered around 17°F at first, with winds up to roughly 46 mph, producing a wind chill as low as –6°F. As darkness fell shortly before 5 p.m., the couple kept climbing toward the summit.
Webcam footage later captured their headlamps still moving high on the mountain around 6 p.m., long after most climbers would have been turning back.
Onlookers who saw those lights became worried. Around 8:15 p.m., Grande says, concerned observers contacted the police, warning that no one should still be high on that ridge in those conditions, especially at night.
Warnings From Rescuers – And Hours Of Silence
From there, the timeline that both Galvin and Grande describe reads like a list of missed chances.
Dr. Grande notes that after receiving those calls from the public, police repeatedly tried to contact Plamberger by phone, but got no answer. At 10:50 p.m., a police helicopter flew up the mountain to check on the situation.
According to both Grande and the Innsbruck prosecutor’s office quoted by Galvin, Plamberger gave no distress signal and did nothing to indicate that he or Gurtner were in trouble when that aircraft was close enough to see.
At some point later in the night, Gurtner began to fail. Grande says some reports place the moment she became effectively stranded as early as 8:50 p.m.; others say she was unable to continue around midnight. Either way, by then the pair were less than 200 feet vertically from the summit in storm-level cold, and she could not go on.
According to the statement from Innsbruck prosecutors cited by Galvin, Gurtner was “unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented” roughly 50 meters below the summit cross. Yet there was still no decisive call for help.
Grande reports that at about 12:35–12:45 a.m., Plamberger finally spoke with a police officer by phone. What exactly was said has not been made public, but investigators say that after that call, he put his phone on silent. He did not immediately request a full rescue, nor did he clearly communicate that his girlfriend could no longer move.
Authorities: He Walked Away And Left Her To Die
The most damning part of the narrative, at least in the view of Austrian authorities, comes in the next two hours.
Galvin writes that, according to the prosecutor’s office, around 2:00 a.m. Plamberger made the decision to leave Gurtner on the mountain and continue alone. Instead of sheltering her from the wind or covering her with emergency blankets they had with them, investigators say he left her “unprotected” in the snow just below the summit.
Webcam and trail-camera images later showed one headlamp – believed to be Plamberger’s – moving away from the couple’s last known position around 2:30 a.m., descending the mountain on another side while Gurtner remained near the top.
Only at 3:30–3:40 a.m., Galvin and Grande both report, did Plamberger reach out again to emergency services. By then, high winds and darkness made a helicopter rescue impossible, and ground teams had to climb on foot. When rescuers finally reached Gurtner at about 10:10 a.m., she was dead.
Her cause of death, Grande says, was hypothermia.
From the prosecutors’ perspective, those choices – starting late, pushing an inexperienced climber into the night, ignoring calls and the helicopter, refusing to use available gear, walking away alone, and delaying a clear emergency call – add up to gross negligence.
They argue that, as the more experienced climber who planned the tour, Plamberger “was to be considered the responsible guide of the tour” and had a clear duty of care that he failed to meet.
Defense Says It Was A Tragic Accident
Plamberger’s lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, strongly disputes that framing.
Galvin reports that Jelinek insists his client’s actions did not amount to a crime, calling Gurtner’s death a “tragic, fateful accident” rather than the product of recklessness or disregard.
In that view, the couple were adult mountaineers who knowingly accepted risk, misjudged the conditions, and suffered a terrible outcome that should not be criminalized.
Dr. Grande walks through how Austrian law will look at that claim. He explains that the charge against Plamberger – manslaughter by gross negligence – is essentially the same as what many jurisdictions call “reckless homicide”: causing someone’s death by breaching a duty of care in a way that is clearly unreasonable and shows serious disregard for obvious risk.
In Austria, he notes, there will be no jury. A panel of professional judges will assess whether the evidence is “strong and convincing,” a standard that Grande says is very close to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
If those judges convict, Plamberger faces up to three years in prison – a relatively low maximum sentence that has already sparked debate about whether the law truly reflects the gravity of abandoning a partner in a life-and-death situation.
Grande is blunt about his own view: based on the public record, he believes Thomas Plamberger is guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence and that many of his key decisions, especially the choice to leave and the 100-minute delay in calling for help, were impossible to reconcile with any meaningful duty of care.
A “Winter Child” Whose Final Climb Went Wrong
Lost in some of the legal argument is the life that was actually cut short.
Galvin notes that Gurtner, a Salzburg native, described herself on social media as a “winter child” and a “mountain person,” someone drawn to snow and peaks even if she lacked deep experience with high-altitude alpine routes in full winter.
She shared photos of climbs and hikes, and friends saw her as part of the mountain community, not a casual tourist.
Tributes posted on a memorial page and quoted by Galvin and other outlets are a reminder of how wide the shock has spread. One commenter wrote, “Rest in heavenly peace.” Another said, “Behind the tears of grief lies the smile of remembrance.”
Others admitted they could “find no right words,” only condolences and the hope that she had found “a wonderful and especially beautiful place… in heaven.”
Dr. Grande, while clear that he thinks Plamberger bears primary legal responsibility, also points out that Gurtner was not completely powerless in every decision. In his psychological analysis, he suggests both partners were “high sensation seekers” who underestimated how quickly fatigue and cold at altitude can turn a bold adventure into a survival crisis.
That framing is uncomfortable but important: even in a case where one person may indeed have abandoned another, mountaineering culture often valorizes pushing limits, and that mindset can make it harder for climbers to admit, early enough, that they are overmatched.
Hard Lessons From A Preventable Tragedy
Beyond the specific charges against Plamberger, both Galvin’s reporting and Grande’s analysis raise a broader question: at what point does extreme sports risk-taking cross the line into criminal negligence, especially when one person in a pair clearly knows more than the other?
It is one thing to accept risk for yourself. It is another to lead someone who trusts you into a situation where you have a much better understanding than they do of the odds of survival, the meaning of the forecast, or the consequences of staying on the mountain after dark.
From a common-sense standpoint, the list of missed opportunities is hard to ignore. An experienced climber starts late on a long route in January, keeps pushing after dark in sub-zero wind chill, ignores calls from police, fails to signal a helicopter, doesn’t fully deploy emergency gear, leaves his exhausted partner alone near the summit, and then waits well over an hour before calling for help again.
Each of those choices may be explainable on its own; together, they look like a pattern of denial that left someone else to pay the price.
At the same time, Grande’s reminder that Gurtner was a climber too matters. In serious mountain terrain, the responsibility is rarely entirely one-sided. Respecting your own limits, insisting on turning back when you know you have nothing left, and refusing to treat rescue as “embarrassing” can be as life-saving as any rope or ice axe.
Ultimately, as Grande puts it, “the mountain has no preference.” It does not care whether a death is later labeled an accident, a crime, or both. It only responds to preparation, judgment and timing.
However the Austrian judges rule next year, the Grossglockner tragedy is already a case study in what happens when those three things break down at 12,000 feet – and when the bond between climbing partners fails at the moment it is needed most.
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
