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

Yes I suppose what I’m trying to say is either he left her in a ‘non-precarious but exposed’ condition vulnerable to the elements OR he left her hanging upside down exposed to the elements.
If she was left not hanging upside down then my question is why he did not protect her with the equipment they had.
I don’t buy that he was suffering from hypothermic madness as he was perfectly able to make a descent himself

I am simply reporting what he said. It is up to you whether you believe it. But your timeline is incorrect. The missed calls were BEFORE he called the emergency services, not after. After the call in which police claim he told them they were fine, the police did not attempt to contact him again.

Kerstin's mother has told the press, "“I think it’s unfair how Kerstin’s boyfriend is being treated. There’s a witch hunt against him in the media and online. The two of them always made their decisions together. Many people who blame Kerstin’s boyfriend have never been in such a situation. It’s easy to be a hero in the comfort of your own home.”

Edited to add - I am not saying this conviction is wrong. I am not a mountaineer so I don't feel qualified to say one way or the other. But I can certainly understand why some mountaineers are concerned about this conviction and what it means for their sport.

Women who are subjected to coercive control can have almost no agency over their own lives.
It is victim blaming to fault a woman for not making more sensible decisions in such relationships.

Although of course in this case we have no other evidence as to whether this was a coercive relationship.

She was experienced in summer hiking and mountain climbing but was a relative newcomer to this.
This was her first winter climb of this nature and a completely unsuitable first winter tour.

She was wearing snowboard boots because they had split boards with them. They did part of the ascent on the split boards (functioning as touring skis). The plan was to snowboard down once they reached the top.
He loaned her crampons but they didn't fit properly and were therefore inadequate.

I read all the live updates in the Austrian press from the courtroom yesterday.
The whole thing was a catalogue of extremely dangerous mistakes or oversights from the very beginning. The tour shouldn't have taken place at all. They had no food with them apart from gummy bears and they'd taken tea but it had frozen.

I don't think he deliberately took her up there with a plan to end her life but I think he was grossly negligent and I suspect he pushed on and on despite her not being up to the rigours of the tour, possibly argued with her and then left her when she couldn't go on any longer.
The court also focussed a lot on the fact that she had a bivak sack and emergency blanket in her rucksack. He didn't have those in his rucksack and claimed he forgot she had them with her. He should have laid her down in a safe place, wrapped her in a blanket and placed her inside the bivak sack. He didn't and she was found hanging off a rope with her head tipped backwards. The judge said the position she was found in and the man's story about how he left her didn't add up.

It is highly relevant that they were of different sexes, and indeed were in a relationship.
That is key to the case, and explains the dynamics between them. See also the testimony of the former girlfriend. This man's behaviour has to be interpreted in the light of his attitude towards his girlfriends.

This situation would not have arisen if they were both the same sex.

We need to start educating women to have more confidence in themselves. I thought this would have happened by now, but half a century on from my teenage years (where I was an unusually assertive girl) I'm seeing less assertiveness in girls, not more.

Accepting that coercion exists and relying on prosecuting the men is not the solution. Arming the girls for a hostile world is.

How do you do that? There’s never been more support for abuse victims, yet it doesn’t seem to be working.

Are those kinds of messages better or worse than the common "time to get your patio done" kind of posts on mumsnet when women are complaining about their husbands?

Awful. That poor woman! He should have got 10 years for this!

The link is behind a paywall. Here's another link if anyone is interested.

nypost.com/2026/02/19/world-news/climber-charged-with-leaving-girlfriend-on-austrian-mountain-to-freeze-to-death-tells-court-she-told-him-to-go-and-find-help/

I can't agree with your suggestion that there aren't weaker men being led into dangerous situations by mentally stronger men.

This could equally well have happened to a young man trying to prove himself to another man.

It's behaviour you see in teenage boy groups all the time.

Worse because they’re joking about an actual person (woman) and making light of her death. Wouldn’t happen on here - not without being swiftly rebuked anyway.

It’s of course impossible to prove but I wonder if she was already incapacitated somehow

Excellent point

Personally that's my theory.

@Playingvideogames You'd have to ask some experts how to stop that but it's probably too late by then and needs to start in childhood.

People don’t tend to post that sort of comment in response to a story about someone who’s actually been murdered and buried under a patio- here they’re joking about an actual woman’s death.

(I agree those patio comments are always grim though.)

I find this really frustrating.

They’ve written the article like she was a child - she was a grown adult who chose to climb a mountain.

It says he ‘allowed’ her to climb in soft boots - no she chose to wear them.

It says he didn’t cover her in a blanket - but why didn’t she cover herself.

She was a keen mountaineer and was not a complete novice, so why did she not protect herself or ring for help.

Unless he killed her and made out like it was hypothermia, then her death was not his responsibility.

This was the most horrifying thing for me (apart from the young woman's death), he has done this BEFORE.

His girlfriend froze to death, her thermal blanket that could have saved her, still inside her bag.

Of course he knew what he was doing. I'm astonished at the lack of sentence.

There is a particular kind of cruelty, arrogance, and hatred that some men show towards women, which is not the same as the attitude strong men show towards weak men.
This is what misogyny is - that particular hatred some men have for women.

The reason I think it applies to him is the testimony of the former girlfriend.

Agree . I have a relative in an awful controlling relationship with a much older man

And a friend whose dad bullied and mocked him into taking awful risks in their sport until he was old enough to cut ties

But he literally called emergency services. Not mythically. And they phoned him back - his phone was on silent, not unreachable.

Also while you may under some circumstances need to leave someone, you wouldn't leave them exposed and fail to use the emergency blanket.

No, missed calls to him were after he called emergency services. Check the timeline.

You have to see the whole episode in the light of the testimony of the former girlfriend.
Without that, your interpretation is possible.
With it, we have insight into his character and thus probable behaviour.

Then why on earth did he get away with such a crazy lenient sentence. Awful.

It says he ‘allowed’ her to climb in soft boots - no she chose to wear them.
They were planning to use splitboards and then snowboard down. I don't know what boots he was wearing. She did choose to wear them but he had the experience of mountain tours in winter and he should have said they were not suitable because, although she was experienced in summer mountaineering, she was not experienced in the winter.

It says he didn’t cover her in a blanket - but why didn’t she cover herself.
She was probably too incapable at that point.

She was a keen mountaineer and was not a complete novice, so why did she not protect herself or ring for help.
Yes she'd been mountaineering since COVID but she hadn't done a winter tour like that before so she was a novice on this particular expedition.

There's an attempted call from her phone to the number 149 at 5.30pm. 140 is the mountain rescue number. It seems likely that she tried to dial 140. No one will ever know why she didn't attempt to call again.

Unless he killed her and made out like it was hypothermia, then her death was not his responsibility.
The judge has decided it was his responsibility having assessed all the evidence and heard from witnesses and experts.