Gubu.ie

Surely there has to be more to this than him just being an incompetent idiot? I mean, he didn't get himself into any danger did he? Only his girlfriend. Yet he was the one with the mountaineering experience. Her biggest mistake was to trust him to keep her safe.

I find it hard avoid the conclusion that Thomas Plamberger deliberately abandoned Kerstin Gurtner, and given that something similar happened with a different girlfriend in the past, who survived but the BBC broadcast part of the testimony from a former girlfriend who had climbed the same mountain with him, where she stated that he had walked away from her when she was crying and screaming in fear at the conditions. She obviously managed to descend unharmed but it seems very likely to me that he did this intending her to come to harm.

And even if he was just stupid and selfish the first time, it seems quite sinister that he didn't learn from that, and that he then did the same thing with someone else.

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/a ... -8g2hgqbc8

An archived version of that article: https://archive.ph/TpbOP

Why does there seem to be so little suspicion about his motives? Or am I just shockingly cynical?

I think it’s just a case of someone who can’t accept their own limitations (as a guide), and is willing to risk the lives of others to boost their own ego. I was surprised by the sentence because it certainly won’t be a deterrent.
My only sympathies are regarding the old girlfriend who he abandoned because she sounded incredibly annoying and I can’t fault him for that.