Did a Climber Leave His Girlfriend to Die at the Top of a Mountain?

Behind the judge’s 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’s left: the defendant and his supporters, mostly men. His lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, was a familiar figure—his 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.

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—not 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.

“How are you?” the judge asked.

“Good.” I thought I saw Plamberger put two thumbs up.

The judge, solicitous, told the defendant that he could take breaks whenever he needed them.

The prosecutor, Johann Frischman, laid out, in a reedy voice, the criminal complaint. It alleged that Plamberger, acting as “the responsible guide,” had made nine serious mistakes during the ascent, then left Gurtner alone, “unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented.” 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. When the rescue crew got to the peak, later that morning, they found Gurtner dead.

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 “tragic accident.” She had collapsed on the mountain and urged her boyfriend to go for help. Plamberger, devastated by Gurtner’s death, had been “already punished,” because a “prejudgment has taken place in the media,” Jelinek said. Now an innocent man was facing the possibility of three years in prison.

As the judge’s attention turned toward the defendant’s table, Plamberger made a preëmptive declaration. “I am infinitely sorry for what happened and how it happened,” he said. “I loved Kerstin.”

Austrians venerate the Grossglockner. As you enter the main terminal at Salzburg Airport, a large photograph of an idealized “Glockner” 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’s Cross went up to mark the summit in 1880. In recent times, the mountain has developed some modern oddities. The whole south side—where most people climb—has surprisingly good cellphone reception. You’re in the wilderness, but you can text your friends or, if you’re in trouble, call for rescue. Grossglockner also has twenty-four-hour “mountain cams,” which people can follow on their laptops from home. There’s 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.

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’s largest youth organization, with more than seven hundred thousand members—close to a tenth of the population—assiduously steered toward skiing, hiking, camping, climbing. Competence and bravery can be assumed. So can the provision of mutual aid.

“On vacation, we switch from everyday problems to vacation problems.”

Cartoon by David Sipress

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’s posts, presumably before lawyers could tell him to lock his accounts.