Was there a backstory?

Outraged Mountain Guide: “The Video Paints Me in a Bad Light”

After the incident, the mountain guide surrendered his license.(Bild: Screenshot/instagram.com/szuki_85)

The video is “unflattering,” he said. Furthermore, two “ego-driven” people had clashed. That was the brief statement from the mountain guide who lost his temper on the Großglockner and attacked a climber. In any case, his statements don’t exactly come across as reasonable...

The video, which shows the incident on the Großglockner on August 22, sparked horror and heated discussions: The footage shows an altercation at an altitude of about 3,000 meters on a narrow, exposed downhill section—a particularly bad place for a physical altercation that was unnecessary to begin with.

A Styrian mountain guide had passed a Polish couple. The Polish man politely asked the Austrian to wait and received a harsh reply: “I’m a mountain guide, shut your mouth!” Followed by a threat: “I’m coming up there to beat you up!” The Polish man also raised his voice. In fact, the man from Schladming, visibly agitated, turned back on the steep slope and came uncomfortably close to his opponent: “Behave yourself,” he shouted in his face.

The Polish man posted footage of the incident on Instagram. A wave of outrage followed; the mountain guide was tracked down and surrendered his license shortly thereafter.

“Just a Side Job”
Now the man from Styria has spoken out with a written statement to the “Kleine Zeitung”—and appears notably calm about losing his job: “That was just a small part of it, a side job. When one door closes, another opens.” 

It was a meeting of two people infected with ego.

Der ehemalige Bergführer

“Who cares about the backstory?”
The Styrian doesn’t have much to say about the incident itself, only: “There’s no point in sugarcoating it—you can’t anyway. The video doesn’t show me in a good light.” In any case, he doesn’t want to take sole responsibility for the outburst: “It was a clash between two people who are ego-driven. But who cares about the backstory—how this scene came about?” 

According to the Polish man, there had been no prior encounter with the man from Styria before the scene was filmed. And the former mountain guide apparently didn’t want to go into more detail in his statement...