A man has been charged with manslaughter after allegedly leaving his girlfriend to freeze to death on Austria’s highest mountain.
The 33-year-old woman, a novice at high-altitude climbing, died when she was left “unprotected, exhausted and hypothermic” on the 12,460ft Grossglockner mountain in January.
Prosecutors say she froze to death just 50m from the summit when her boyfriend, an experienced climber, abandoned her for six and a half hours in the deadly cold while searching for help.
The 36-year-old man has now been charged with manslaughter by gross negligence and faces up to three years in prison if found guilty.
Investigators accused the man of several errors following a forensic probe of the incident, including analysis of phones, sports watches, photos, videos and an assessment by an alpine technical expert.
They say the man did not take into account his partner’s inexperience, and he was also accused of starting the tour around two hours later than scheduled, while not carrying any sufficient emergency kit.
With wind speeds of up to 46mph and temperatures that felt like -20C, the defendant should have turned back long before darkness set in, according to the public prosecutor.
He also allowed his girlfriend to ascend the mountain with a splitboard and soft snow boots - equipment deemed highly unsuitable for a high-alpine tour in mixed terrain.
The defendant and his partner were stranded from around 8.50pm, but the man is also accused of not calling emergency services before nightfall and allegedly stayed silent even when a police helicopter flew over at 10.50pm.
Alpine Police officers made several attempts to contact him, finally getting through at 00.35am, but after that, he is alleged to have placed his phone on silent and missed further calls.
He then notified the rescue services at 3.30am, but high winds further prevented a helicopter rescue at dawn, and by the time mountain rescuers reached the woman shortly after 10am, she was already dead.
The man’s lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, said: “My client is very sorry about how things turned out,” adding that the defence “still assumes it was a tragic, fateful accident”.
A statement from the public prosecutor's office said: “At approximately 2am, the defendant left his girlfriend unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented about 50 meters below the summit cross of the Grossglockner.
“The woman froze to death. Since the defendant, unlike his girlfriend, was already very experienced with alpine high-altitude tours and had planned the tour, he was to be considered the responsible guide of the tour.”
The trial is set to take place at the Innsbruck Regional Court on February 19, 2026.
The news comes after the death of a Russian climber who was stranded on a 2500ft peak in Kyrgyzstan after breaking her leg.
Natalia Nagovitsyna, 47, died on the Victory Peak in August after ten days of failed rescue attempts and horrendous weather that forced teams to abandon the mission.
The climber spent more than two weeks in a small tent, torn apart by gusting winds, on the mountain where temperatures reached lower than -20C.
