Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die atop a mountain?

> His guilt stemmed from the fact that, despite his excellence, “you are obviously someone who is struggling to make the switch from your own skills to another’s.” He did not recognize the exhaustion of his partner when he should have. None of the climbing he had done with her before should have made him think she could go up the Stüdlgrat in winter. He let her climb with inadequate equipment. He did not turn back at the Breakfast Place. “Had you acted differently, I strongly assume that your partner would have survived,” the judge said. The requirements for a finding of gross negligence were fulfilled “due to the cumulative circumstances.” There was also Kerstin’s “contributory negligence”—she could have made an emergency call herself.

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> Peter Habeler, who is Austria’s greatest living mountaineer—he summited Everest without oxygen along with Reinhold Messner, among many other accomplishments—was interviewed for a public-television documentary about the tragedy on Grossglockner. Habeler is in his eighties, still tanned and climbing. He had trenchant things to say about poor judgment and, when a question came about Thomas leaving Kerstin on the mountain, his gaze hardened and he switched to strongly accented English. “That is a no go,” he said, twice. Never mind what the courts said. Thomas had broken a basic code of the mountains.