MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.
Five years ago, MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive – traveled from Los Angeles to Utah for an adventure getaway. MJ, who is 38 and works in PR, was looking forward to exploring Zion’s striking scenery; its vast sandstone canyon and pristine wading trails were on the list. But on the morning of their big hike, MJ was not feeling well. She could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
When she caught up at the top of the mountain, they took a picture together. Then her partner hiked down the mountain with a woman he had met on the way up, leaving MJ to finish by herself. They broke up shortly after that trip. (MJ asked to be referred to by her initials for the sake of speaking openly about a past relationship.)
Last month, MJ opened TikTok and heard the phrase “alpine divorce”, a label she now attaches to her experience in Zion.
the pair were not exclusive
…
MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women
…isn’t that was “not exclusive” means?
yes, but people are emotional and they don’t abide by their own terms
every casual relationship i ever had was never actually casual. it was just full on monogamy with a ‘get out of jail if someone better comes along’ card built in.
Casual partners may still prefer to know if their partner is sleeping with others for a variety of reasons. The first one that comes to mind is health.
Sure. My point is, though, isn’t that already implied by them not being exclusive?
They could be not exclusive but still agree to let the other know when they introduce a new sex partner.
Y’all never heard of safe sex?
Nothing is behind it. It’s another dramatized thing that people are using for social media clout to score points, and people lap it up. This is manufactured rage bait.
We are also only getting one side of the story. I know for a fact a few of my breakups where the other party completely warped the story to make me into a villain. I had one incident where I was teaching my gf to snowboard and she broke her wrist on the bunny slope, a super common injury. I spent all day with her in the hospital etc. We broke up 6 months later and started telling people I had shoved her to the ground and broke her wrist on purpose because I was jealous of her success as a pianist or something and was trying to sabotage her life . It was insane and her story got worse as time went on post-breakup.
90% of these are probably just unhappy people on a bad day who are re-writing the story into some elaborate narrative of evil and abuse because they know it will do well on social media. And a lot of tiktok/social media people are very unhappy people. And unhappy people do a lot of lying and exaggerating for attention. well-adjusted people aren’t making teary faced videos on tiktok about their breakups.
Do you have proof of any of that or is it simply your opinion?
i have as much proof as the woman in the article has about her story.
which is none at all. it’s all hearsay. social media is all hearsay. this article is about social media stories.
there is no burden of proof here. anymore than there was for dudes going on about spermjacking women 10 years ago. I remember that viral panic.
Pretty sure the guy literally convicted of manslaughter for abandoning his girlfriend to die on a hike is evidence of this happening.
Every day I’m thankful that I’m not romantically interested in men.
Astounding that there are men in here defending these dickbags left right and centre. And presumably other men just like yep good point bro, technically correct. Please dump me and run off a fucking cliff you spineless turdweasels
This idea that it’s totally normal and cool to start a hike with someone and then decide to leave them behind is mindboggling.
People are so weird. I once worked closely with a single woman, and the boss had a big Christmas party for the managers, and she brought a guy that she’d been dating for a couple months, and was getting close to.
For some reason that none of us ever learned, he decided to completely ignore her that night. He knew nobody at that party but her, and yet he pretended like he’d never seen her before. It wasn’t a big party,maybe 20 people, so we ALL saw what was going on. Eventually, he took her home, but they never went out again.
I asked her about what happened, and he wouldn’t discuss it. He dropped her off at home, and they never spoke about it on the ride home or after. The guy just decided to turn into a different person that night.
BTW, she was a really cool person, pretty, fashionable, great hair, super smart, funny, great job, owned her own house, etc. The loss was entirely his.
Ugh, that is the stupidest, irritating thing. I felt disgust through the screen.
And some men wonder why some women would choose a bear.
TBF bears are pretty great. Bears probably win over women, too.
I’m just gonna say it, if you want to break up with your girlfriend don’t be a dick about it.
“Don’t go on a hike with someone you don’t trust.” All you little boys in here victim blaming need to be checked.
A recent case study illustrates this point: last month, an amateur Austrian mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend behind on his country’s highest peak while he went in search of help. The man, a Salzburg chef identified only as Thomas P, said he was “endlessly sorry” for her death, and his lawyer called it a “tragic accident”. But Thomas P could not explain why he failed to wrap his freezing girlfriend in her emergency blanket before heading down the mountain without her. Earlier in their trek he had also told a police officer over the phone that they did not need any help, even though a rescue helicopter was made available to them.
I remember hearing about this one.
He had done it before with another woman, but she didn’t die. In the recent case, the dead woman’s family supported him. Even though he took their survival supplies. Very odd situation.
Her mom’s issue is the media and courts treated her daughter like a lost sheep led up a mountain.
She was an experienced climber and they planned their trips together.
He didn’t take the emergency supplies, he just didn’t swaddle her like a baby in her own.
The helicopter call stuff was kind of shady tho, and rightfully why he was found guilty.
But it’s not like the mom said he was innocent, she said it was likely an accident, because procedure in climbs like that is to leave someone behind, and she knew that because her daughter had been doing this long before the boyfriend.
But her comments got misrepresented for the headlines.
It all makes logical sense, it’s just the people telling us about it care more about drama and clicks than informing people.
If you understand it, it becomes an incredibly boring story that doesn’t stand out. Which is why TikTok went the complete opposite direction, and mainstream media is reporting on their nonsense for the clicks.
Quick edit:
Specifically for the emergency blanket part, the last stages of hypothermia makes you feel insanely hot.
The early stages cut off circulation to limbs to keep the torso warm, that’s why frostbite effects the extremities, it’s a trade off. When you’re going to die from it, you’re body can’t squeeze you’re arties off and all that “warm” blood floods to your limbs, causing them to quickly rise in temp while the vital parts get cold.
So she likely was bundled up just fine when he left her.
That’s all normal stuff climbers know, but the media/courts seemed to be willfully ignorant of.
All the articles I’ve read say he never applied the emergency blanket, it was still packed away. Nor did he make her safe by building any kind of shelter or securing her against wind.
And then he also did not call for help until three hours after they decided they needed help, and rejected the helicopter rescue. None of those are normal things. Those are the actions of someone abandoning someone to die.
None of those are normal things.
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Which is why he was found guilty of manslaughter
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And those bad decisions may likely be due to stress/incompetence. Something that happens, but again that’s what makes it manslaughter.
Those are the actions of someone abandoning someone to die.
If you’re ignorant of the realities of alpine mountaineering I could understand why you believe that.
The dead woman’s mom wasn’t ignorant of it tho, that’s why she keeps saying it wasn’t murder.
How experienced are you with cold weather mountain climbing?
I grew up doing it.
Well, then you don’t have an excuse
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how often does this actually happen. I remember seeing a news item that mentioned a previous but to call it alpine devorce it would have to be at least 3 figures here or its just nutters the way other nutter activity is.
In a TikTok with more than 4.2m likes, a woman bawls as she takes shaky steps down a rock formation. “He left me by myself, I should have never come with him,” sobs the woman, who did not respond to a request for comment. Others flooded the comments section with stories about being served with an alpine divorce. One woman described a 12-hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her, during which she was assisted by a “very nice man from Norway” who carried her backpack. Another described getting lost in the woods after a man left her behind, and immediately blocking his number once she got home.
Many of the women described having some level of dependence on their partner in nature. They may not have been carrying the right supplies or enough water, or were not familiar with the terrain, making them feel vulnerable.
“It’s such a common thing,” said Julie Ellison, the first female editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine who now works as an outdoor lifestyle photographer. She has heard “so many stories” about men fumbling outdoor dates. “There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil or ill-intentioned, but it usually has a negative effect on the partner who’s being left behind.”
The article describes many instances of this happening and actually references the recent case in Austria where a man was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. He had also done it to a previous girlfriend.
So yes, it happens often enough for many women to have similar stories. The term ‘alpine divorce’ didn’t come out of nowhere either:
TikTokers talking about alpine divorce might not know that the phrase comes from an 1893 short story by the Scottish Canadian writer Robert Barr about an unhappily married couple who spends a weekend away in the Alps. The husband had planned to push his wife off the summit during a hike, but in an O Henry-esque twist, the wife tells him she has framed him for murder before jumping off the ledge herself, right before the police she called show up.
That said, many alpine divorces do not happen because a man has ill intentions. Maybe, like the Austrian hiker claimed, he thought he was doing the right thing. Maybe he was impatient, or had a woefully uncritical view of the Hemingway-esque macho man archetype that he wanted to embody in nature. Or maybe he had a radically different goal for the hike than his partner, and they failed to touch base beforehand.
Im still not really sure here as I have also seen things where yeah you can find people who experienced the same thing but the numbers are not really taken into account. Just hearing tiktok makes me skeptical. I mean with billions people hundreds is like .00001%. Like chance of having experienced a mugging is .1% in the us. I will say though that it really boggles my mind the whole many may not be ill intent but then again that makes me more inclined to think of it as nutters. Like the incidence of schizophrenia is less than 1 in 100 but greater than 1 in a thousand. So like the news articles can be like. Schizophrenic wave continues to sweep the planet!
You would have all of your questions answered if you read the article
Like chance of having experienced a mugging is .1% in the us.
Would you similarly disbelieve someone if they told you they were mugged? Or is that only reserved for women telling stories of men who have mistreated them?
Im not disbelieving. I just find articles with titles that make things out to be a common occurrence or a thing to be wierd when its a rarity. I mean I even get the term because that comes from the group who in talking with each other start using it and with the internet that possible.
that’s what makes it a viral social media thing though. you take a rare thing and try to claim it’s a trend or a novelty.
Dude - read the article. Not just the title, the actual article. The author backs up their title.
What are you talking about? It goes through some individual stories. There is nothing that backs up its like a common occurence or a massive uptick or something.
How many women have to tell similar stories before you believe that it’s a thing that happens frequently enough for there to be a whole article written about it?
Yeah, I would. People lie. Especially for clout and victimhood status. Especially on social media.
Oh I’ve run into you before.
You don’t think your tales of woe about women are for victimhood status? Lol
So…
They weren’t in an exclusive relationship.
She told him to walk ahead without her.
And he talked to someone else since she told him not to walk with her, someone he seems to have met while waiting for her at the summit before going down.
Kind of sounds like she broke off a situationship on a hike. And immediately assumed if he talked to any woman then he was romantically interested in her, so their open relationship was never going to work anyways.
Even the actual alpine one where the woman was left in a blizzard recently and died, her parents have come out and said the infantilizing of their daughter was an insult to her memory.
Like, it should be a safe bet that anything that starts on TimToknis bullshit.
But yeah, big outdoorsy trips aren’t for rocky relationships. Romantic or otherwise you need to be going with people you trust. Shit can get stressful and not everyone reacts well to stress. It’s not the same thing as the same distance walk thru the park.
You seem to be making a lot of assumptions there.
No, I just read the article…
What app/frontend do you use? It seems most people are missing the feature to open the source to read.
Yeah that situation seemed defensible on his part. But then the article comes in and outright says that in a lot of these cases it’s a failure of communication where the men aren’t thinking about it like that and in hindsight realized that they’d made a mistake.
That all said, I find it difficult to be sympathetic to these guys as someone who likes to hike with her wife. Even if I was annoyed she wasn’t able to keep up with me I can’t imagine ditching her even if she told me to. When I go hiking with someone or a group one of the major rules is that you never leave the weakest hiker alone unless it’s an emergency. You stick together and enjoy each other’s company
Wife is quite a different magnitude of commitment, in comparison to a non-exclusive non-girlfriend partner.
Doesn’t mean it’s ok to abandon your hiking partner whilst on the hike.
Like seriously, you think that it’s ok to treat someone terribly on a hike as long as they’re only a casual partner?
Depends on the hike’s safety.
None of you read it and are taking givesomefucks at his word about what’s in the article lol
Feel free to elaborate. Voyager let’s you read the article, in case you need it.
I did read it. And givesomefucks is absolutely adding his own spin and assumptions, most clearly where he’s asserting that the author and MJ were assuming her partner was romantically interested in the woman he met at the top and climbed back down with. That’s no where in the article.
Were there any other assumptions?
OK, so the bit where the poster says “sounds like” and not “he stated for the article” is the bit you see as not substantiated by the article? Everything else is accurate, except the bit were the poster uses a euphemism for “this is something that seems to me without explicit confirmation”. Had op said that as a fact, and with more examples, you would have a point. But as is… Nah
How dare you!
Putting in that the woman in the story assumed her partner was romantically interested in the gal he met at the top that he climbed back down with is absolutely making assumptions. That kind of assumption is not in the article and you’re framing it as if she was being irrational.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
When she caught up at the top of the mountain, they took a picture together. Then her partner hiked down the mountain with a woman he had met on the way up, leaving MJ to finish by herself
Both her and the author thought it was important to note that it was gasp a woman that he talked to.
There’s a logical implication for why they both thought that was important enough to be included when retelling the story.
Saying that someone’s implication might not be true isn’t the same as making an assumption.
It’s literally the opposite…
You’re literally making an assumption.
Neither the author nor MJ said he was romantically interested in the other woman.
So then it’s not a big deal he talked to someone else after his date told him to leave her?
And he’s a good guy for ensuring she made it safely to the top before returning?
Like, what exactly do you think that guy did wrong then?
Because logically I have zero idea what you’re doing.
It’s a big deal that he started with a hiking partner and then abandoned her. It’s rude.
And hellesbelle was correct when they said you were making a lot of assumptions here.
With a male bias. Are you a misogynist by chance?
Are you a misandress, by chance?
maybe they’re just a man…
Damn what a cowardly way to dump someone. Is it really that much of a pain in the ass to stick it out for a couple of days until you’re not literally abandonning someone somewhere they didn’t expect to be alone? Bunch of douchy and selfabsorbed asshats.
For context, angel’s landing is one of probably the top 5 most famous hikes in the country. It’s so popular that they have timed entry, and you have to book a time well in advance. It would be very, very, very hard to get lost, you can see the spot you started from pretty much the whole way, you are part of a steady stream of people, and there’s cell service. There is no “alone” on that hike.
People have died on that hike, but if you exclude suicide and people who were intentionally going off trail to get pictures closer to cliff edges, it’s very unlikely. You are probably safer getting dumped there than at a restaurant in a part of town you aren’t familiar with.
I would not put that anywhere near the same category as guy who left his girlfriend on a mountaineering expedition.
My comment was mainly aimed at the general thought of just abandonning someone on any hike, not necessarily this particular one, but the whole “alpine divorce” thing in itself.
Or to call it off before you start hiking. Or even to stick together not happy and not liking each other on your way back
Just a few weeks ago I saw a dude have an argument with his partner on top of Cradle Mountain and then head down before her. We kept an eye on her to make sure she made it down OK (sketchy down climbing). He was at the bottom of the steep bit on his phone when we got there… She caught up and they seemed fine, but it was a weird vibe.
I went with my ex to a local waterfall once. It was pretty dry, so I wanted to explore the top of the falls a bit since it’s normally not accessible. It’s very flat up there, and I kept back from the edge since I don’t like heights anyway, but she got mad at me for being up there since she didn’t feel comfortable coming out with me.
So a couple minutes later, I’m done poking about, and I turn around and she’s nowhere to be seen. Now I’m worried she went over the side and something happened to her. I started looking over the edge of the hill leading up to the falls and trying to see if she’s down there, but there was enough water to still be spraying the rocks. My foot slides out on a wet patch, and now I’m falling down the rock face!
I crashed off at least 3 ledges on my way down, and was flipping over and trying to grab onto things to catch myself, but there was nothing but rock and moss, but I finally come to a stop. I have no clue how I didn’t die or break anything. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. After I checked on my own life, I saw she wasn’t there, so I made my way to the car. She was there just being annoyed.
She seemed to think I deserved it for not listening to her for saying it was dangerous, while it was not the activity I was doing that led to me falling, but that I thought I needed to be looking for her after she disappeared without saying she was going to the car. I don’t think she must have realized it was not just one rock I fell off of, but probably at least 10+ feet of rock, but needless to say I wasn’t very appreciative of her lack of concern. I was just grateful to be alive at that point. I was sore for a few days and had some bruises that lasted a couple months. Was I a jerk? I don’t feel so, but I don’t believe remote places in the outdoors are the place to put arguments ahead of everyone’s safety either way. If I would have gotten hurt badly, who knows how long she would have sat there before looking for me.
IMO, that incident was ¾ your fault.
I’m sure I deserve partial credit. I was in a bad place mentally back then so I did a lot of stupid and inconsiderate things I regret. But I’m also now with someone who wouldn’t walk away from me even when I am being an idiot because they care about my safety, so I learned a lot of lessons since then.
I mean what else are you gonna do? Have an escalating fight while you are in an emotionally unstable state? Walking away to calm down is just the right thing to do often, that doesnt change just because you are on a hike.
The cases in the article sound like there is more to them though.
Especially on a hike, it’s far safer when you’re not super upset about something.
I don’t care who you are, you should never go to a place with someone that you are not capable of leaving alone.
Remind me never to get on an airplane or train.
Buses questionable.
When you get on a plane, they do a whole safety announcement, pointing out the exits. Trains and busses have legally mandated labeling for exits. You are well informed how to get out on your own.
Yeah for planes I’m not worried about how to use the door, I’m worried about how I get from 20 000+ feet to ground level, safely.
For trains and buses it’d be more about hiking out from the middle of nowhere.
Either case I’m not actually worried, just saying that the logic of “trust no one but yourself” is flawed.
It’s less about trusting no one and more about recognizing that something could happen to the person you are with, like a medical emergency for example, and that you should be able to survive on your own. Say you are hiking with someone and they fall and break their leg. Do you both just lay there and die? You need to be able to get yourself back to safety and to get help.
he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive
her partner was seeing other women.
So she had a double standard. Then surprisepikachu’s when she tells him to go ahead and he does. Lol
Even casual partners will want to know if their partner is sleeping with others for a variety of reasons.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
He kept pushing ahead and going faster than she could, what else was she supposed to do besides tell him to go on ahead?
Tell him to wait for you. You don’t abandon your hiking partners.
Still trying really hard to make this situation the woman’s fault, hm?
It’s a real struggle in that situation - do you insist that the man you’re with who is visibly frustrated and physically stronger than you wait? Or do you give him what he wants which is to push ahead and leave you?
This is why women choose the bear.
What part of “you don’t abandon your hiking partner” was unclear to you
What part of that was within the woman’s control?
None, which is why I’m confused about why you think I’m blaming her.
“Tell him to wait for you.”
That’s the sentence where you’re putting the onus on the woman to tell her partner to wait for her.
He should do that already.
