The Mountain

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1:01Phoebe Judge:Tell me about the decision to go mountain climbing on January 18, 2025. Whose idea was that? That depends on who you ask. How experienced were they at mountaineering and climbing? That also depends on who you ask. In late 2024, Thomas Planberger and Kirsten Gertner had been dating for almost a year. Thomas was 36 years old and a professional chef in Salzburg, Austria. Kirsten Gertner was 33 and worked at an office in the same city. They'd met on Tinder and had started to talk about moving in. In January, they were going to go on a trip together. Thomas and Kirsten were planning on summoning Grosklochner, which is the largest mountain in the Austrian Alps.

1:53Phoebe Judge:New York Times reporter Jonathan Wolfe. And they decided to take the most dangerous route, which includes sort of like this really sort of rocky, arched climb to the summit. A climbing tour company warns people that to take this route, you need to be in very good physical shape and have some rock climbing experience. An experienced mountaineer told a BBC reporter that in bad conditions, trying to summit Grossglockner can feel like fighting to survive. Grossglockner's peak is over 12 ,000 feet above sea level. More than 7 ,000 people climb it every year. On January 18, 2025, Kirsten and Thomas began their climb of Grossglockner at 6.45 a.m.

2:45Phoebe Judge:They had backpacks with ropes, emergency blankets, a tent, and headlamps. Kirsten had brought a split snowboard. She planned to use it to descend the mountain after they reached the summit. They were planning on it being an overnight hike, so it was, you know, going to be a very long day. Some mountain guides break the trip up into two days, a day to reach the beginning of the ridge, and then a second day to get to the peak. Around 1.30 p.m., Thomas and Kirsten arrived at a resting point known as the Breakfast Spot, about 11 ,600 feet above sea level. And this was kind of like a point of no return before the summit.

3:27Like, a lot of times people, if they don't get there at a certain time, they might end up turning back. But it's definitely a moment where you sort of rest for a moment and check in and see if you're going to continue. And Mountaineers I spoke to said, you know, that's definitely a point where a lot of times they make their clients rest whether or not they want to.

3:46Phoebe Judge:Thomas Plamberger said at this point he and Kirsten didn't feel tired, so they kept going. It seems like there were some hikers who saw them on the mountain, including one hiker who said that he hiked with them for a little while, a little stretch. And he said that Thomas was, you know, sort of looking after Kirsten, checking in on her. How did people say that Kirsten was doing at that point? They said that she looked like she was doing fine. She wasn't struggling and seemed like a pretty normal hike to them. At nightfall, at around 5 p.m. in winter, Thomas and Kirsten were still climbing. About an hour and a half later, their headlamps were visible on a webcam that live streams a view of the top of the mountain.

4:31We can see their light sort of slowly making its way up the mountain. And it's the only light that's on the mountain. So, you know, it's possible there's other people not using lights, but it seems like they were the only two people on the mountain.

4:43Phoebe Judge:Their plan was to climb to the summit in the dark. Mountaineers that I've spoken to said that that's actually not out of the ordinary. Like, it's definitely riskier. You need to be of a certain level. But people do climb this mountain at night. And it seems like they were just a little bit more slow going. And they were sort of stuck on the mountain. And the weather turned quite bad. There was a weather pattern that the locals called the phone winds, which can really bring, like, really intense, cold, blustery winds to the peaks of the Alps. And from mountaineers that I spoke to, they were actually aware that this was happening on this day, so they said that they basically chose not to summit the mountain.

5:23Phoebe Judge:At around 8 p.m., they stopped for an hour and a half. Their climbing rope had gotten stuck, and then Kirsten hurt her hand. At 10.30 p.m., an Alpine police helicopter went to check on Thomas and Kirsten. The helicopter passed them about six times. When they did not signal for help, the helicopter left. Around this time, Alpine police also tried to call Thomas. His phone number was listed on his climbing permit, but he never answered the phone. Later, Thomas Plamberger said he had not realized his phone was ringing because it had been set to vibrate. But Thomas says that soon after the helicopter left, Kirsten, quote, suddenly showed increasing signs of exhaustion.

6:14Phoebe Judge:About a half hour past midnight, Thomas called the police. And there's real debate about what happened during this phone call. Thomas says that he was convinced that police were aware that a rescue was needed and that he wanted them to send a helicopter. The police, on the other hand, said that Thomas in this moment told him that everything was fine and so they did not start a rescue procedure. And then, for three hours, no one heard from him. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

6:55Phoebe Judge:Alpine police attempted to get back in touch with Thomas Plamburger by phone, and then by texting him on WhatsApp. One officer wrote, do you need help now or not? But they didn't get a response. In his WhatsApp, it appears it has like the two check marks or whatever it was delivered. We don't know if it was read, but it was delivered. When he had spoken to the police earlier, Thomas says they told him the best thing was for them to keep moving. Because if you stop in a very cold environment, there's a chance that it'll be worse for you. Basically, you'll start to lose energy. You'll start to lose warmth in your body.

7:31So he was on the impression that he needed to keep moving. And so that's what he told Kirsten after that phone call, that they needed to keep moving.

7:39Phoebe Judge:That night, the temperature dropped to 17 degrees Fahrenheit, but felt even colder with the wind show. The wind would have been very strong at this point because when you get towards the peak of Grossglockner, it's really exposed. So a lot of the winds that might have been blocked off in other areas as you're climbing the mountain, that's no longer the case. You're just completely exposed, and it would have been very cold at that moment. They made it to just below the summit, where they stopped for about an hour and a half. Thomas says that at that point, Kirsten was too exhausted to move anymore.

8:13Phoebe Judge:He said at around 2 a.m., he and Kirsten agreed that he should try to get down the mountain by himself to try and get help at one of the refuge huts. At around 3.30 a.m., Thomas Plamburger called the police again and told them that he was on his way down and that he had left Kirsten behind. He asked if they could send a helicopter for her. But the wind had been picking up speed all night. By then it was blowing up to 45 miles per hour, and they told him it was too dangerous for a helicopter to fly. Thomas told police where he had left Kirsten. The next day, a rescue crew headed up the mountain.

8:58Phoebe Judge:Around 10 a.m., they found Kirsten. She was dead from hypothermia.

9:07Phoebe Judge:Kirsten's family held her funeral nine days later, The notice read,

9:21Phoebe Judge:Kirsten's mother later said,

9:31Phoebe Judge:Thomas wrote on Instagram, It hurts so incredibly much. And then, almost a year later, Austrian prosecutors filed charges against Thomas Plamberger for grossly negligent homicide. Prosecutors said that Thomas was the more experienced climber and should have been a guarantor of Kirsten's life. It's called Garantenstellung. Verena Morschetz is a professor of criminal law at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. A guarantor is somebody that is responsible for another person. And where you mostly need this term is when you have a crime committed by omission. Like, it's easy to say if I commit a crime by action, like I do something, I hit somebody, then it's clear I am the one responsible for hitting somebody.

10:27But if a crime is an omission, it's failing to act with due diligence. In Austria, this charge is typically used in things like a car accident or, you know, maybe a parent who is not giving the correct care to their child. Or in the mountaineering context, it can be used in certain situations where you hire a person, like a guide, that is responsible for you to take care of you and to look after you. But you can also be a guarantor as a leader out of courtesy. where you don't have a contract, you don't get paid for it. It's non-commercial, but it's just out of courtesy. And as such, you're a guarantor and also responsible for outcomes or, let's say, negative things happening to the individual that you're responsible for.

11:14Phoebe Judge:How big of a deal was it in Austria? Was everyone talking about it? Yes, a lot of people were talking about it. I mean, where I am, we have all these mountains where we have a lot of alpine tours. A lot of people come and pay guides to walk up the mountains, basically, with the skis. And there's a lot of people that do tours together, like, you know, friends that go up the mountains together. So I think for that reason, many people talked about the case and said, wow, look at this case. This is happening. What's going to come out? I think we actually haven't had a criminal case like this before.

12:00Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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13:51Phoebe Judge:Over the past two decades, 29 people have died on Grosslockner. But Thomas Plamburger's case was the first time the Austrian government had filed criminal charges for a death. Austrian prosecutors said that Thomas Plamburger had made nine mistakes that led to Kirsten Gertner's death. The first error they listed was that Kirsten had less experience than Thomas at mountain climbing at that high of an altitude in the winter. If I was in that position of taking a young woman up to do 12 ,500 foot, I would make sure that both of us were properly equipped, properly experienced. John Leach is a survival psychologist.

14:38Phoebe Judge:He was a mountaineer and emergency mountain rescuer for years. she was going to a height level she'd never been to before in winter at night now thomas he'd been up at that altitude before and he'd been on the sort of roofs before so really he should have stepped in right at the beginning and made sure that she was properly equipped properly kitted out and if they were going to go and do that at that altitude in winter at night then i would have basically insisted that she does it in daytime beforehand, you know, quite some time beforehand, and build up experience for that on that terrain, in that area, under those conditions, and then build it up gradually.

15:24Once you know, and you've got a feel for the route, you know where the top is, you can do all that, then you go for the big one and do it in winter at night. So there's a number of failures here before she's even set off.

15:37Phoebe Judge:A mountain guide on Grossglockner told reporter Jonathan Wolff that he's seen more clients than he used to trying to summit challenging mountains without getting used to the altitude or continuing even when the weather is bad. The prosecution also said that Thomas and Kirsten left two hours too late. Thomas had not considered how short the day would be in winter and how early night would come. Prosecutors said Thomas also should have noticed that Kirsten wasn't wearing hiking boots. Instead, she was wearing soft snowboarding boots. Other errors include Thomas not turning back when the weather got worse, Thomas not signaling for help before it got dark, and Thomas being unreachable after he had called police.

16:30Phoebe Judge:Finally, they said that when Thomas left Kirsten at the summit, he had not moved Kirsten to an area protected from the wind, or used any of their emergency equipment to keep her warm. They had a small tent and emergency blankets that you can use if you get into trouble, and they said that she wasn't in the tent, the blankets weren't used. And there'd been more than one person I'd been involved in with Mountain Rescue, where we've recovered somebody who's got a backpack full of survival kit, but he's not used to any of it. And they say, well, it's a survival kit, I'll stick it in my bag, and they go off.

17:10But they've never used it, never even opened it at times.

17:14Phoebe Judge:John Leach says he's never left someone behind to get help. He says it's part of an unspoken code. The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation says that climbers should be prepared to make compromises in order to balance the needs and abilities of all the group. Emergency dispatch operators often advise climbers to stay with their companions instead of leaving for help. But there aren't any official rules for mountaineers about what to do in emergencies. And, you know, mountaineers that I spoke to said it's just never an option to leave someone by themselves on the mountain. And then at the same time, like there's rescue workers that I've spoken to are also mountaineers.

17:58And they were saying it was hard to put yourself in the mindset of a person who's undergoing an emergency in cold weather where you're under stress and it's dark. and they were just sort of unwilling to pass judgment on that, saying that, you know, we can look back at things and make judgments, but in that moment, it can be really difficult to understand what the best course of action is.

18:23Phoebe Judge:John Leach says at high altitudes, people have a harder time making decisions. You can get cognitive impairment occurring around about 9 ,000, 10 ,000 feet, particularly in the skills of decision-making and logical reasoning. if things are not going well then your ability to focus gets diminished as well so you find yourself being distracted and you're not concentrating and that's when mistakes happen when people start to get clumsy and they're switching off from the major things which afterwards you know if they're rescued successfully they look back and i've heard so many people say this so many survivors they say you know why did i do that how far you can think ahead it's severely diminished under pressure and you get tied in more and more to the present moment because if you can't see a future then you're not going to respond to that future but true panic is very very rare and usually if it does occur it tends to occur in enclosed spaces the most common trigger is if you're in a place you know that your life is under threat you know there's a chance of escape but you also appreciate that that chance of escape is diminishing so for example if you're an ocean liner that's sinking, you very rarely get panic outside, true panic.

19:41What you do get is confusion and bewilderment and people running around flapping, you know, like a bunch of penguins on steroids, all flap and no flight.

19:51Phoebe Judge:Thomas Planberger's trial was scheduled for February 26th at a courthouse in Innsbruck. There would be no jury. The verdict would be decided by a judge named Norbert Hofer, who also worked part-time as an emergency mountain rescuer. He has a special competence. So all the mountain cases go to this judge. Verena Morschetz. Like we have judges that are assigned specific cases, like let's say corruption cases, whatnot. And he's assigned all these Alpine cases because of his knowledge, because of him understanding the difficulties that one faces. Verena says that prosecutors would need to prove to the judge that Thomas was the more experienced climber and had been the one in charge.

20:40The judge tried to find out if the defendant was in reality more experienced. So he talked about what are the climbing techniques that she used, what are the climbing techniques that he uses. Like he went into professional discussions with him to figure out what did he know about alpine climates Climbing techniques.

21:02Phoebe Judge:But Thomas testified that he had no alpine training whatsoever. He said he wasn't a professional mountaineer. He had taught himself through trial and error and watching videos online. But he had climbed Grossglockner before. He testified that he and Kirsten had planned this trip together, that Kirsten loved mountain climbing and was physically very fit. They had climbed in other parts of the Alps together. But while they were planning their trip, Kirsten wrote in an email to Thomas, I completely lack experience when it comes to winter tours. The prosecution called a police officer to testify. The officer said that Thomas had told him that he had been the main planner for this trip.

21:54Phoebe Judge:Another officer testified about taking Thomas' call just after midnight. He said that at that point, it wouldn't have been difficult to start a rescue operation, but it wasn't clear that they needed one. He said that, quote, that was definitely not an emergency call. Thomas had put his phone on silent after speaking with the police. When Thomas was asked why he had put his phone on silent, he said he was trying to save the battery because he hadn't brought a power bank. Thomas said the change in the weather had taken them by surprise. He said that lower down on the mountain, the wind had been non-existent, but had gotten stronger the higher they went.

22:41Phoebe Judge:Thomas also spoke about his last conversation with Kirsten. So he said that during their tour, because of the weather, it was sometimes hard to understand each other at certain moments. but he said that when he left her that she was in relatively good condition and she was clear, she was responsive, she was exhausted, but she was clear and she told him to go and that it was a mutual decision. Thomas said he tied Kirsten to a rock before he left. He said he didn't have an explanation for why he had not sheltered her more. He testified that the last thing she said to him was, go on your own and save your own life.