When Rebekah Lee was in her twenties, she decided to embark on an ambitious climb up Mount Stuart in Washington State and "made a series of bad decisions".
She and her two friends had arrived at the base of the climb hours behind schedule and with low water supplies, and spoke about whether to turn back - but decided to go ahead with the route anyway.
"We were young and dumb and had summit fever and really wanted to do that route and we continued anyways," Rebekah, a nurse, says. They ended up running out of water and finishing the climb 24 hours later than expected - but they were lucky.
"It could have been much worse than just being very tired and very dehydrated," admits the 34-year-old.
Climbers and mountaineers have always had to make difficult decisions during expeditions about how to stay safe, which routes to take and whether to turn back. They might not know whether they'll get exhausted, if the weather will get worse, or how big the risk of a serious accident is.
But in the last week, debates about how to make these decisions, as well as who is responsible for them, have broken into the mainstream. It comes after an Austrian man was convicted of gross negligent manslaughter over his girlfriend's death from hypothermia while climbing Austria's highest summit, Grossglockner, in January last year.
Thomas P was accused of failing to turn back or call for help in time after he left his girlfriend and reached the summit of the mountain. More than a year after Kerstin's death, Thomas was found guilty, given a five-month suspended sentence and fined €9,600 (£8,400).
The judge (himself an experienced climber) said Thomas P had not left his partner behind "wilfully", but concluded he was much more experienced than Kerstin G and should have accepted they needed to turn back earlier.
The prosecution argued that Thomas P was "the responsible guide for the tour", failed to call for help in time, and didn't send any distress signals when a police helicopter flew overhead. Thomas P pleaded not guilty and Kerstin G's parents told the court she had been "really active" in mountaineering since 2020.
The case has sent ripples through climbing communities.
People die while climbing every year. According to data from the Austrian Board of Trustees for Alpine Safety published in Austrian newspaper Der Standard, 29 people have died on Grossglockner in the past 20 years. Angela Benavides says she's reported on "many accidents on many mountains" during her more than 15 years working at the adventure sports website Explorers Web.
But what sets this incident apart is the fact that it resulted in a criminal case, and that a non-professional climber was held responsible.
People in the mountaineering industry in the UK, the US and Europe told BBC News they've been keeping a close eye on the case. Some have questions over whether this may lead to other similar cases. Others wonder if it could make non-professional climbers more hesitant to take friends out into the mountains in future.
