Man left his girlfriend to freeze to death

[Trevordidit]

Man left his girlfriend to freeze when she was struggling on a mountain hike.

He's been found guilty of manslaughter.

So many aspects of his account don't make sense - AIBU to wonder if he did it on purpose?

News article

To SpaceRaccoon - hypoxia (eg at altitude) and hypothermia aren't the same thing. My husband was hypothermic on a mountain in Wales and lost the ability to do anything sensible at all. It wasn't due to high altitude, just the cold.

Yes bagging the summit is a clear goal with some, not all climbers. However most experienced climbers won't do that if an injury occurs. They will stay with the injured and assess, ensure stability and and then make the decision to proceed with a rescue. That's protocol and should be an absolute before ascent.

I knew someone who went to base camp on Everest and they had to spend days getting acclimatised to the lack of oxygen.

Hypothermia can happen within a cold unheated home in winter to those who are vulnerable such as the elderly and the very young.

If you're on a mountain in freezing conditions and are injured then you will die from hypothermia if exposed with no rescue blanket and bivvy. Kerstin had the blanket and bivvy in her bag. It wasn't used.

My dad planned getting to Everest 2 camp. His friend had horrible altitude sickness so they didn’t make it. That’s what you do. If someone in your party is unwell you go back.

It’s the rule for every group activity I do.

The climbing.com article was insightful and fair imo. I agree with it

“If you have more experience and fitness, your job is not to bring your partner to your level,” said Damian. “Your job is to go down to their level.”

He added that climbing with a romantic partner can lead to an inherently fraught, complex dynamic. This is particularly true if one climber has significantly more or less experience than the other. “I don’t know what their relationship was like, outside of this climb,” he said, “but when you have male-female relationships climbing together, we see a lot of things go wrong.” One party may be eager to please, another eager to impress, and at the end of the day, no one is thinking rationally.

https://www.climbing.com/news/climber-faces-homicide-charges-after-his-partner-dies/

Sorry yes you're right, I misread that.

I wonder if it was actually her that sent the message to parents. It seems like an odd thing to do. It fits more with his actions of avoiding the helicopter etc.

You dont need a token

Oh bloody hell, I've repeatedly misread it as "Australia's highest mountain" and thought "what the fuck?!" 🙄

I think on Everest all bets are off. I mean, they have literally left people to die on Everest - knowingly - due to Summit fever. It might be the case at base camp/ 1 or 2, but not in the Death Zone. Plenty of climbers have been left to die.

Yeah he was a tough old sod. It was in summer, which helped.

No, one of em died 15 years ago 💀. BIL was an oddball, I think they were not that surprised.

I was so disappointed with how this was presented on the BBC radio news this morning. They summarised it as a partner making the heartbreaking but potentially sensible decision to go for help, and then had some climbing expert on talking about how worrying this verdict will be for experienced climbers in an informal group/setting.

No mention of the hours and hours during which he did nothing to help. No mention of the survival kit she had in her bag. No mention of the fact that he had mobile phone signal, and was able to phone for help. No mention that he sent helicopters away and told police that they were fine.

If this was "just" a misjudgment, it was a sustained, prolonged, bloody minded misjudgement. It wasn't a panicked error of judgement, and he wasn't left making an impossible decision between only two potentially disastrous options (staying with her and dying himself, or setting out for help)

@ChelseaBagger , couldn't agree more. The sentence is an insult too - he was found guilty of manslaughter and got a 5 month suspended sentence and an £8200 fine!!! One of the mitigating factors was the personal loss that the woman he left to die was his girlfriend.

So he's responsible for her death but he won't set foot in prison.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce8grejd7gdt

This was a manslaughter by gross negligence verdict. None of those killed had the proper equipment. To those posters on here talking about Kerstin's shoes is this a similar victim blame?

Someone might have beaten me to it, sorry if so. But it’s not that unusual on snowy/icy peaks to climb at night when the ice is stickier/less slippery than it would be under sun.
But yeah, he at best is a dick who wanted to summit regardless of her safety and deserves a far worse sentence.

Why the hell are they climbing it at night?? Is this a thing? That is so dangerous.

The exit route was over the summit.

That's why they were pushing on, because they couldn't go backward.

It wasn't personal ambition or summit collecting, it was the way out of a bad situation.

Your view is clouded by the fact that he was a man and you want him to be guilty.

He may be guilty, but don't invent facts to sit your theories

This was a commercial venture.
There is a duty of care.

This is the first case where this concept of unpaid friend as responsible leader has been posited.

There are also countless testaments from people including the deceased own mother, who claim he would never harm her

Well he did harm her, as can be seen from the fact that he has been convicted of gross negligence and she is dead.

He is not responsible for her death.

She bears responsibility in the choices she made. Women have agency to make both good choices and bad choices.

He is guilty of negligence which makes him partially responsible.

I do recognise the difference. However I also hope it gives people a warning when it comes to extreme sports with a person who is physically not the same and has less experience - as if anyone needs to have that legislated or set in law because of a death.

Most responsible people instinctively know that.

To add there's a duty of care when I get into my car and drive. I'm not a commercial venture as a driver.

Right, but he already knew they were in a bad situation when they reached the point of no return. They could and should have turned around and had the opportunity to do so before things deteriorated even further.

Never mind the fact that he waved away a helicopter sent to help them.

At least read the timeline and details.

And if he’d helped her or let her get help she’d be a 34 year old Austrian woman, experienced in climbing who had a near miss on a notoriously difficult mountain that she went on for the first time with her bf who’d done it 15 times before.

“Thoughtless” is a gentle term for what he did to her - and another gf in 2023.

He's been judged guilty of causing the death of another by gross negligence.