I read FC's comment and "rudimentary lathe" was the first thing that came to mind.
Posted on 12/20/2025 4:04:20 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
A man in Austria was charged in the death of his girlfriend after leaving her behind, in a case testing ideas of freedom and responsibility in the mountains.
The Grossglockner, Austria’s highest mountain, seen from the nearby Sonnblick Observatory.Credit...Kerstin Joensson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A distant webcam captured the moments the couple’s hiking trip started to unravel.
The pair, a boyfriend and girlfriend, were nearing the summit of Grossglockner, the tallest mountain in the Austrian Alps, when their lights appeared on its dark peak.
Around midnight, the man said, his girlfriend was struck by sudden exhaustion and could not continue. He said the two made a contentious, if not uncommon, decision: He would leave her behind and continue alone to find help.
Hours later, he was out of harm’s way, and the woman was dead. Rescuers found her frozen body later that morning not far from the summit, officials say.
Now, nearly a year later, the authorities have accused the man of making a series of mistakes that led to his girlfriend’s death, charging him this month with gross negligent manslaughter.
The unusual case has roiled the mountaineering community and could have ramifications for Austria’s large alpine tourism industry. Mountaineering in Austria has surged in popularity in recent years, and experts say underprepared visitors are taking more risks and accidents are reaching record highs.
The case has also provoked a broader debate in Austria, as questions of personal responsibility collide with a long-established legal tradition that requires people to protect others and avert danger.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame?
Woman is frigid. Yeah, blame the man.
Valareeeeeee! Valahahahahahahahhaha
I read FC's comment and "rudimentary lathe" was the first thing that came to mind.
Do you know when and where in Colorado this happened?
Ah-ha, the devil is in the DETAILS.
“He allegedly failed to make an emergency call for hours, did not signal a passing helicopter, and later put his phone on silent, missing calls from rescue services.
He also allegedly left Gurtner in an exposed spot without using available emergency gear like a bivouac sack or rescue blankets to protect her from the cold.”
When I was in the Air Force reserves I was at the base for a weekend when a Blizzard hit.
I had just pulled out of the driveway and driven down the road for maybe 30 seconds when suddenly it was a complete whiteout.
It took me nearly 1/2 an hour to find my way back to the driveway that was less than 100 yards away.
If I had left 5 minutes sooner I would have been stuck out in the countryside for six days.
Which base?
Niagara Falls. With the 914th Airlift.
Happened about fifty years ago. He was coming from Missouri. He had done a lot of research on minnow populations in urban creeks. He had accepted an academic position somewhere in Colorado, but I don’t know where. I only saw him once or twice. Never actually met him. He was a friend of somebody I went to high school with and they came into the restaurant where I was a dishwasher. I mainly knew of him from a newspaper article about his research. That was before he headed to Colorado.
High altitude sickness can be debilitating. On a steep mountain like that it would take at least two other people to lower one on a rope if they were completely disabled. One on top and one at the bottom of each rope pitch.
I used to be a mountaineering instructor with the Colorado Mountain Club. I dealt with altitude sickness there, but never by myself. We did do winter ascents of 14,000 ft peaks, almost always without incidents because we always had enough people to do a rescue.
When I climbed Cerro Aconcagua in the Andes (photos on my home page) we expected to have a frozen body at the summit. The body had been there for years, but it was not really possible for humans to get it down. I am guessing that someone rolled the body off the edge and down the south face. We had a team of ten and seven made it to the summit. Two were having altitude problems at the nearly 23,000 ft summit. I was the second most experienced climber in the summit group and I was chosen to get the sickest person down to high camp (about 19,000 ft) as fast as possible. The most experienced climber worked the ropes for the other group of five including the other person with slightly less severe altitude sickness. The person I was working with was really sick and just wanted to sit down, but was able to do rope work on each pitch. The summit day took about 19 hours from high camp and back, but everyone made it. In the two month climbing window in December and January that season, I think 6 or 7 people died on the mountain, all from altitude issues (pulmonary edema and cerebral edema).
Going to 12,000 ft without acclimation can also be deadly.
Adam blamed “the woman that you gave me.”
Eve admiitted that she had been deceived by the serpent.
He isn’t responsible for her. She decided to undertake a deadly risk and paid the price. “He could have carried her down the mountain”? Insane. He could barely even get himself down. How the hell do you climb down a mountain carrying another person? You watch too many shitty movies.
They lacked proper equipment and had zero chance of a positive experience. He should be praised for managing to survive. She was smaller, weaker and apparently stupider. So she didnt make it.
With what and out of what?
On that mountain you would want to start at midnight with headlamps and be down shortly after noon, before the afternoon avalanches start.
I hate myself for thinking the same thing.
Should he have stayed and died with her?
Should he have tried to drag her behind him?
And anyway, the woman was an adult. She made the decision to go on that dangerous adventure. If she was unprepared, it's her fault, not his.
City-slickers shouldn’t just go wandering into the hinterlands.
Out of what? Ice? By the time he finished fashioning it, they would both be dead.
Ah-ha, the devil is in the DETAILS.
“He allegedly failed to make an emergency call for hours, did not signal a passing helicopter, and later put his phone on silent, missing calls from rescue services.
He also allegedly left Gurtner in an exposed spot without using available emergency gear like a bivouac sack or rescue blankets to protect her from the cold.”
******************************************************************
ALL the choices that he made seem to be a choice that would maximize the chances that she wouldn’t survive. I’m surprised that so many here want to excuse him from all blame and responsibility.
Ah... so that's why he was charged. If the above is true, it does sound suspicious.
Was she nagging him?
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