The trial of the Austrian climber identified only as Thomas P., convicted on February 19th by a local court for the death of his girlfriend, Kerstin G., from hypothermia on Austria’s highest mountain, Grossglockner, reignited a debate that has been going on for years about how far the responsibility of those who are with someone on a trail or mountain when everything goes wrong goes. And, as there is no law that objectively establishes what, how and when to do during major troubles, all that can be said is: responsibility must be assessed on a case-by-case basis and the only law that applies on the mountain without exception is… that of gravity. And you can’t joke about this one.
The Austrian court questioned why Thomas, more experienced than Kerstin, left her near the 3,798-meter summit, unprotected and exhausted, without any protective equipment, in adverse weather conditions, in the early hours of the morning of January 19, 2025, after a whole night exposed to the extreme cold and without him having signaled to the helicopter flying over the area the need for assistance for his companion.
Sentenced to five months in prison and a fine of €9,400 (R$57.6 thousand), for negligent homicide (when there is no intention to kill), Thomas is still awaiting an appeal on parole. But the decision, rare in the world of mountaineering, means “a paradigm shift for mountain sports”, as published by the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, cited by the BBC.
And, if the case surprised the Austrians, the excitement in Brazil is no different. All hiking and climbing groups remembered cases of media impact such as that of Roberto Farias Thomaz, who got lost on the way down Pico Paraná after being left behind by his friend Thayane Smith, mobilizing dozens of people for four days in a rescue that, in the end, ended with him arriving at a house completely outside the focus of the search. Or the accident with the girl Juliana Marins, who fell over the edge of the Rinjani volcano, in Indonesia, dying after being left behind by her guide and after a lengthy rescue operation by the unprepared local authorities.
For the mountaineer and experienced guide with the Alta Montanha Pedro Hauck agency, the responsibility of those who take people on a trail or climb is not abstract, “any accident will always have someone responsible”. And if this may sound obvious, he points out that “many jurists and people who just give opinions will say that, if the accident occurs in a park, the park is responsible, even if there is a commercial relationship, where, for me, the objective responsibility lies with whoever is selling the activity”.
Regarding the Austrian sentence, Hauck believes that it was “a good decision, because if the participant is responsible, the owner or manager of the area can rest assured that they will not be condemned, which is fair, because whoever is providing security to the group is responsible and, as much as this is bad on the one hand because it puts a burden on me, who sells the activity, on the other it is good because I will have to be responsible for myself, it will never be a third party that I don’t even know, people do a lot of difficult things that they have no control over. and ends up causing accidents due to malpractice”.
This incompetence, added to the exponential increase in the demand for Instagrammable mountains and trails by people who have no knowledge of the basic techniques for doing so, is something that scares Ricardo Ishigami, a climbing instructor with extensive experience. “Among us climbers, we often say that the mountain reveals who people really are, the character and values of each person, especially when the situation involves some stress”, he highlights.
Ishigami says that when climbing, as in the case of the Austrian couple, it is essential “to be careful with who you are connected to on a mountain, it is your life that is at the end of a rope”. He assesses that “a lot of people will climb a mountain, go on a trail, without any base, without technical knowledge, because they see it on social media, see a tutorial on YouTube and think they already know how to do it, and this has left us scared, because we know that it’s not quite like that”.
“What we are seeing with this”, he adds, “is this number of accidents that still tends to increase, because the social network will not tell you when to abort a summit or trail because of rain, or lightning”.
Critical of the excessive commercialization of “experiences”, Ishigami cites another risk embedded precisely in the excessive demand for the most flashy records. “You have climbing routes on Corcovado, Dedo de Deus, Agulha do Diabo, and climbers come from all over the world, so guides can charge them up to US$300, but we have noticed that many of these guides are taking people who have never climbed, who will literally be pulled up to celebrate a birthday, for example, with a beautiful photo for social media.”
The biggest risk involved in this amateur “elevator”, explains Ishigami, is that the guide will have one of the most frequent problems on the mountain — such as being hit by a rock falling from above, or finding himself in the middle of a swarm of bees — and the layman will be left there without the slightest idea of what to do to help him or even how to go down in search of rescue. Or the client, ignorant of the basic safety procedures that the guide suddenly didn’t even follow in order to go faster to the summit and record the “feat” of his guide, ends up getting into an accident or even dying. “And then, he will say that it was the tourist’s fault, that he disagreed, that he didn’t obey, and there is no expertise that knows how to identify what really happened, so there is no law that establishes the correct procedures and the limits to be evaluated, because the only law that is immutable on the mountain is that of gravity”, he summarizes.
Marcelo Rey Belo, president of CAP (Clube Alpino Paulista), also states that there is little point in waiting for laws to solve the problem of responsibility. “Mountaineering federations and confederations were created largely out of a need to ‘defend’ amateur practitioners from impractical laws”, he says, remembering that, “in the early 2000s, ideas began to emerge that to climb you needed to have a physical education teacher, an ambulance, concerns that even make sense in a commercial excursion, but make it unfeasible for two friends to go out to explore new mountains”.
Rey Belo considers that, although legislators want to eliminate risks, “and believe that it is possible to do this with laws, in addition to them not solving anything, they often create, in neophytes, a false sense of security that, in fact, increases the risks even further”.
“There is a very strong ethical principle in mountaineering: whoever goes out together comes back together, this reflects the commitment between climbing partners”, he adds. “At the same time, there are situations in which staying could mean putting two lives at risk, and going down to get help may be the only possible alternative. Each episode needs to be analyzed within its specific circumstances.”
He summarizes his position, remembering that he speaks for himself, not for the club, that “the mountain demands a delicate balance of freedom with responsibility, because without responsibility, there is recklessness, but without freedom, there is no mountaineering.”
To put it mildly, because the conversation is still going to take a while and is far from reaching a conclusion, the old saying goes “if you don’t know how to play, don’t go down to play”. Or, in this case, don’t climb to the summit.
