An Austrian mountain guide is under investigation after insulting and nearly pushing a climber off a cliff on 3,798m Grossglockner, Austria’s highest peak. It happened when the guide’s group intersected with the Polish man who was waiting for his wife to descend a cable-equipped section. The guide verbally abused them and pushed the man on an exposed ridge. The Polish climber’s headcam recorded the altercation.
The incident took place on August 22 at the Mürztaler Steig trail of Grossglockner, at around 3,000m near the Erzherzog Johann Hut. The man was standing on a steep ridge above his wife as she carefully descended a cable-equipped via ferrata section. At that moment, a guide with two roped clients appeared from above. Without responding to the Polish man’s greeting, he stepped between them and started down the cable section, pushing the woman aside.
“I told him that I was going first [and] his response was extremely arrogant,” the Polish climber posted on Instagram, together with the video recording. “He made it clear that because he was a “Bergführer” [mountain leader], I should shut up and accept his behavior.”
‘Are you crazy?’
“Bist du verrückt? [Are you crazy?]” the Polish man is heard to say in the video. The guide then furiously climbs back up the section, goes to the man, and, yelling, pushes and shakes him with one hand, even though the man was unroped at the edge of a drop.
“In my opinion, this unnecessarily endangered not only my wife and me, but also his two clients,” the Polish climber wrote.
“Overtaking other hikers or climbers in the mountains is completely normal and understandable, [but] I would expect a professional mountain guide to show basic courtesy, good judgment and, above all, responsibility for the safety of everyone around him,” the Polish climber concluded.
The IFMGA and the Austrian Association of Mountain Guides were tagged on the post, and they soon replied.
“The scenes shown in this post do not reflect the behavior we expect from our members…We clearly distance ourselves from the mountain guide’s conduct as shown in the video and the way he communicates,” the Austrian Association of Climbing and Ski Guides stated.
Later, it added that the Mountain Sports Association’s disciplinary committee in the region had launched an investigation.
Grossglockner. Photo: Wikipedia
The debate
Everyone agrees that the guide’s behavior was unacceptable, especially when he climbed back furiously and shook the climber. Several noted, however, that stressful moments are common on crowded climbs, where inexperienced climbers who progress very slowly delay others and form lines. Most of them believe the guide could have simply passed the climbers after politely asking, without endangering anyone in the process.
Several readers shared previous conflicts of their own, especially at exposed or technical passages where slower climbers or groups cannot be easily passed. Grossglockner is among the most visited peaks in the Alps, and bottlenecks are common on most of its routes, especially during the peak summer season.
