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.
MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive…[MJ] could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.
This is like saying you agreed to go dutch on a date, and then feeling that something was “off” because you couldn’t shake the feeling he was intending to split the bill.
No shit?
It’s already been talked to death elsewhere in this thread, but there’s many reasons casual partners may have agreements to let each other know when new sex partners are introduced.
Including STIs and related health issues.
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.
Got back into the dating world recently and was pretty surprised to learn that respectfully communicating your feelings about things afterwards is apparently rare. People need to grow up.
Ever since social media took over, dating and relationship rates have plummeted.
The amount and stuntedness of emotionally stunted immature men is only going up with social media…everything
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?
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?
Soooo, this guy was a dick, but aren’t you just defining “exclusive until we say we are not”?
Maybe I’m getting old and have lost the lingo (very possible) but I feel like we’re redefining exclusive here.
How would they be exclusive if additional sex partners are allowed? It’s not an asking for permission scenario, it’s just keeping your partners informed of who is involved.
I’ve mostly done so for health reasons.
I still think we are saying the same thing.
“Let’s not put labels on anything, let’s just choose to not have any other partners while we are sleeping together. If one us changes our mind about that, they should be up front with the other person about it.”
“Let’s be exclusive. If one us changes our mind about that, they should be up front with the other person about it.”
Am I missing something? Is “exclusive” used for a different definition now?
The chance that they agreed on that and she wouldn’t mention it is slim, though
I’m shocked by this comment section… Guys defending some POS for leaving their non-committed partner on their own?
I mean, she said go on without me.
It’s an out and back. They waited for them up at the top.
To me the only shitty part is dumping them for another partner on the way down, goddamn that’s pretty shitty. We’re only hearing half the story though. Maybe she was being a jerk too and he didn’t want to put up with it.
Yeah, this is just zoomers not realizing what they’ve signed up for.
Uhhhh
“seeing other women” means “not exclusive”
but “not exclusive” does not always mean “seeing other women”
He could be, just as one example of many, very unsuccessful at trying to see other women despite having an existing “nonexclusivity” agreement with her.
You don’t expect your BF to hook up with someone new mid-mountain.
Actually it says he wasn’t exactly her boyfriend either
Ok so it’s ok to abandon your fuck buddy. TIL
Nobody but you said that that part is OK.
You’re in a thread wondering about thee thread’s confusing description of their relationship status, not about the “leaving her behind” part.
Nobody but you missed the sarcasm. Or the moral behind it.
I was talking about the hooking up mid mountain part, which is what your comment I replied to was primarily about. And the OPs too.
You can just admit you missed that part instead of getting defensive.
I missed nothing. That is not important to the story. When you go into the wilderness with someone, you have formed an inherent defense pact and have a duty of care to each other. Hooking up mid mountain and leaving the other person, regardless of their relationship, is immoral. If harm comes to them, then it was likely illegal.
Your comment wasn’t talking about the “abandoning mid mountain” part. It was talking about the relationship status part. That’s the part I corrected. We weren’t, in this comment chain, talking about the overall story - it was about your comment on their relationship. Stop trying to build a strawman.
Geez, Americans really can’t admit they made even a minor mistake.
Adding you to my block list. Keep your petulant pedantry to yourself.
“I thought he was only seeing other men!”
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.
Valid, but far from universal. Poly people do exist.
poly people have rules.
Like telling their partners when they have a new sex partner.
Co-opting alpine divorce, which regularly involves a murder attempt, feels weird? Just call it the sierra split.
I do wonder how much of this is a cheapening of the weekend getaway, where you’d go to a B&B upstate, find out your potential partner snores, drinks to much, is rude to service workers, or views a toothbrush as optional. You’d sigh and split. It’s just a bad weekend.
But with this, camping and hiking is a complication. You’re drinking warm filtered water from a Nalgene, eating granola because someone forgot to bring a lighter. Also, it’s raining and all your socks are wet. Did you bring anything to wash dishes? Ah, there are no dishes. You smell like smoke and are covered in sand.
Granted, you can do camping/hiking well, but I’d bet some of these cases are from people doing it poorly, trying to save a buck by avoiding more expensive weekend getaways.
The article literally goes over a recent case where a man killed his girlfriend by leaving her in the wilderness on a hike.
But sure, I bet she died only because they realized they aren’t compatible in a relationship.
Are you talking about the famous case? Where the guy declined the helicopter rescue, and later left his partner without being wrapped in a sheet to get help? That one sounds way more alpine than getting ditched on a crowded hike.
Yeah it’s in the article
but I’d bet
So no proof then. Guesses don’t count.
Ok your honor I’m sure they’ll follow the rules of the courtroom next time
Y’all expect women to kowtow to the men in here, we’re allowed to push back.
So many assumptions about the women in these stories and none of ya even read the damn article.
Women are allowed to share our abuse stories. Deal with it.
Why would my response have anything to do with the gender of the person I’m replying to? How do you expect me to even know that information? How do you know I’m not a woman? (I’m not, just pointing out that immediately making this a men vs women thing is bad.)
It’s clear from our comments that OP and myself are women.
You can pretend that lemmy isn’t overwhelmingly male dominated at this time, but I won’t.
I didn’t make this a men vs women thing, it had already become that days ago.
Lemmy is absolutely male dominated, I just don’t like perpetuating the gender war discourse. There are some reasonable takes in here and I would prefer not to have it be drowned out by the “women weak” and “men evil” takes I’ve seen being tossed around.
Then maybe you should be calling out your fellow men rather than pushing back against the few women in here.
Articles like this are 99% trash
So are some comments.
So two or three “credible” stories over a century qualify for this headline? Seems a bit inflated.
I mean… it’s not a nice thing to do to someone but… eh…
What is everyone’s problem with women sharing these stories though? We’re not allowed to speak about these instances because you decided it doesn’t happen frequently enough?
That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t make it about something it’s not.
If something happens a handful of times… it’s barely a story.
That’s literally what your comment is saying - that this type of abuse doesn’t happen enough to warrant attention. Why do you have a problem with women sharing stories like this?
Apparently you can’t read.
So two or three “credible” stories over a century qualify for this headline? Seems a bit inflated.
I mean… it’s not a nice thing to do to someone but… eh…
Care to elaborate? Because you are clearly expressing that this doesn’t happen enough for people to actively talk about it.
Apparently you can’t write lol
I think sharing is fine, and the actions of these boys are deplorable. But the story makes it out to be a major trend, instead of just sharing the stories. And to me, that is likely to make it happen more often, not less. So that bothers me.
“Shhhh don’t talk about abuse you’ve suffered because it might bring more abuse”
Do you ever look yourself in the mirror? You keep misrepresenting what other people are saying and being an ass, but in another comment you complain it’s impossible to have a conversation with someone because they are being scornful.
I’m guessing this is why you have a new account; probably banned a lot for being a dick.
I was thinking the same. Some people just enjoy a fight. Triggers adrenaline and such. I do feel bad for them that they don’t have better ways to get happy feels.
I’d agree, and this sounds more of a failure of communication and expectation setting from the get go, from both parties.
Why would the woman in the story have to express that she expects her partner to hike with her the whole time?
Edit: Who are all you men who think that it’s acceptable to abandon your hiking partner while on a hike?? What the fuck is happening here?
Because it obviously wasn’t clear to her partner. Instead of assuming, communicate. Women do this often and yes I’m generalizing but men aren’t mind readers. Different people will have different expectations unless you talk and agree.
How is it not clear that when planning a hike where there is only 2 people, that the assumption is those 2 people stay together unless there’s an emergency?
That’s the whole issue here, right? Why are these men deciding on their own that they no longer want to hike with these women and are abandoning them on the mountain? Why didn’t these men communicate with their partner?
You are again assuming. It’s obvious you shouldn’t. The confusion is your own.
Why didn’t these men communicate to their partner that they no longer wanted to hike with them?
I would never leave my girlfriend stranded on a hike. I need her for if there is a bear.
Some people, not anyways men, have been taught, rather mercilessly, that they have to be self sufficient. These people get aggravated, even angry when someone else fails to live up to the standard that they (unfairly) were forced to. There can be an instinctive feeling that it is somehow an injustice to them.
That doesn’t excuse abandoning someone in the wilderness. Often these people struggle to learn to be a kind helper.
Also, none of this is meant to excuse the behavior. It is possible to understand “why” without condoning it. When confronting this it is important to be firm that it is unacceptable, as well as understanding that it may be a struggle to relearn.
This is so fucking sexist.
Hey everyone, women are just as capable of surviving in the mountains as men!
There’s some safety and ethical rules in the mountains. You don’t leave your hiking/climbing partner unless you both agree it’s fine. Gender of this partner doesn’t matter. Guy leaving another guy is equally bad as guy leaving a woman. Women are not inherently more prone to dying in the mountains than men. The fact that everyone treats this as someone abandoning a helpless person is infuriating. It’s shitty behavior but it would be equally shitty if this guy left his male friend or if she left him. It’s 2026, this is fairly progressive space and still everyone looks at with “women need protecting” mindset. It’s mind boggling.
When I see women in the mountains I don’t think to myself “oh my god, they are here without supervision? hope they will be fine!”. Am I the only one?
Some women in the outdoors industry bridle at the gender stereotypes wrapped up in alpine divorce: chiefly, the assumption that a woman cannot take care of herself or has less experience outside than her male partner. “Believe it or not, we can do things that have nothing to do with men,” said Ellison, the Climbing editor. “I really struggle with saying ‘men do this,’ and ‘women do that,’ and those generalizations.”
Blair Braverman is a writer, adventurer and dogsled musher who has competed in the Iditarod and Kobuk 440. (She took 36th place in the 2019 Iditarod, becoming the first Jewish woman to finish the storied, 1,000-mile (1,609km) race.) “Personally, if I were with a man and he wandered away from me on a mountain, I’d be more worried for him than me,” she said. “I think it’s interesting that [the term] assumes that the woman is the one with less capability.”
If there is a feminist spin on alpine divorce, it’s what comes after the women are left behind. When her ex ditched her in Zion, MJ hiked alongside a friendly female stranger and her young son. Naomi helped the woman with vertigo in Arches. “It happened to me many years ago,” one user wrote in the comment section of the viral TikTok clip. “I met 2 girls on the mountain and told them what happened, and we walked down together. They wouldn’t let me go alone.”
The article also goes into this aspect of the conversation.
So some women in the industry agree with me. Good, I was starting to think everyone is sexist. I hated the excerpt so much I didn’t read the entire article. Nice to see they also covered it.
You should really read the article before you get all upset about how sexist it is.
I was referring more to the concept the article was talking about and the general attitude in comments under this and other similar posts as being sexist. It’s good that this article is somehow better at covering it but this doesn’t change how most people react to those stories.
It could have bolstered your argument if you had actually read the article before spouting off.
At the end of the day, it’s just women noting to others another way men can choose to abuse. It’s just another way for women to keep each other safe by sharing our stories.
Ok, I guess I didn’t consider leaving someone to hike alone abuse because in my experience women are perfectly capable of hiking alone. It’s like saying that leaving someone to shop alone in a mall is abuse. If it’s actually reasonable to assume women need male companion in the mountains then you’re right, it’s not sexists.
You’re ignoring the subtly to these stories - in a lot of cases, these women’s male partners were more experienced, were carrying more supplies, or were otherwise more prepared for going into the wilderness. So there’s an additional layer of danger when these men decide for whatever reason to leave behind their less experienced partner.
A shop is not the same as a hike in the wilderness. People do have different levels of experience and preparedness.
Reading the article would have shone a light on this for you.
Society is very fucking sexist. In my experience (which is a small dataset), unprepared women are more likely to go on a hike with a man than the other way around. Men like to play the provider/protecter role. Women know that. Society has taught women to put themselves in a vulnerable position to appeal to men (movies… constantly). Some women seem to actually want to be “rescued” by thier man as well. Dunno if that is social training or something else. So yeah, it’s very sexist, but it is also a breaking of the social contract, and it is unacceptable. Even is the roles are reversed it would be unacceptable. It’s just less likely to happen.
Dunno if that is social training or something else.
It’s the patriarchy.
In general yes. But is the desire to be “rescued” from the patriachy or is it somehow a leftover instinct from a bygone era that the patriachery reinforces?
Yes, it is ethically wrong to leave anyone behind in the wilderness.
What has surfaced in the news more often recently is men doing this to women. Was that not clear from the article?
There was actually a case in Brazil recently where a girl left her male friend alone during a hike, and the guy got lost and stayed 5 days surviving alone in the jungle near the mountain until he was eventually found alive. Almost no news outlet mentions that he was abandoned, but there is a video from the girl who was supposed to be with him saying that she left him behind and out of her sight. No news outlet blamed the woman like they would if the gender roles had been reversed.
I’ve actually been left alone on a trip before. I was the less experienced one, but I managed. Not trying to play the victim just saying it happens. I’m used to being left behind it’s so ordinary I wouldn’t call the news, (because when women do this to men it would never reach the news, and whyd I’d need this attention anyways)
When women do this to men it doesn’t reach the news.
Yeah, you’re right. I’m always complaining to my Bros how I’m sick of getting left in the woods by women. /s
Come on, why bother with the lie? Why not just paste a nice link to some stats? Get out of here, man.
Everyone I don’t agree with is lying
What has surfaced in the news more often recently is men doing this to women. Was that not clear from the article?
There was one story from the Alps. That’s it. It looks like someone saw this story and tried to create a new phenomenon looking for stories that will fit the narrative. All assuming that when two adults go into mountains women are universally the ones that can’t take care of themselves and need help and it’s men’s responsibility to provide this help. It’s sexist.
Was that not clear from the article?
No one throwing a fit about this article has actually read the article
Yeah, I started reading the other responses… Big oof.
How did they establish it’s not also happening at the same rates in other-gendered situations? Seems anecdotal and contrived.
Sounds a lot like whataboutism.
This the same reaction as “men also are abused!”, which is obviously true, hut at much, much lower rates than women.
There is no requirement to establish a pattern of women abandoning men for this article, because it’s not about that.
It’s not whataboutism, even if it sounds like it.
Primus “I want chicken”
Secundus “What about salmon?”
Primus “Whataboutism! Your claim is invalid you have lost the debate.”
Pro tip: We’re not locked into one topic. We’re allowed to make comparisons, we all do it every day.
Yes, I know you will now say I a gaslighting. You win
which is obviously true, hut at much, much lower rates than women.
i take it you’ve manned and run the domestic crisis phone lines and seen this firsthand like i have because my experience is that women get much much more help (because help exists for women, it does not for men). men just report their first experiences, move on without getting the assistance that does not exist for abused men and then do not report any more abuse they suffer.
So an article about women being abandoned in the wilderness should somehow evoke the plight of men’s lack of support… What’s the connection between these two?
men report abuse less than women because the support structures are not there for them. it’s like autism and left-handedness. it does not go away simply because you are not looking for it.
Again, I’ll ask wtf that has to do with the article.
“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.”
But Ellision also says:
Some women in the outdoors industry bridle at the gender stereotypes wrapped up in alpine divorce: chiefly, the assumption that a woman cannot take care of herself or has less experience outside than her male partner. “Believe it or not, we can do things that have nothing to do with men,” said Ellison, the Climbing editor. “I really struggle with saying ‘men do this,’ and ‘women do that,’ and those generalizations.”
Blair Braverman is a writer, adventurer and dogsled musher who has competed in the Iditarod and Kobuk 440. (She took 36th place in the 2019 Iditarod, becoming the first Jewish woman to finish the storied, 1,000-mile (1,609km) race.) “Personally, if I were with a man and he wandered away from me on a mountain, I’d be more worried for him than me,” she said. “I think it’s interesting that [the term] assumes that the woman is the one with less capability.”
So there’s some acknowledgement that women can be just as capable of men in the outdoors, but I agree with you that the article tone is more of “women are helpless out in the wilderness and need a man to protect them”.
The difference being, it’s your fucking partner, and it’s guys doing it. No sexism here, just men being shitty partners. Shame them and move on instead of deflecting.
Yes, shitty men are shitty partners. Why is being shitty in the mountains different than being shitty anywhere else? All this is assuming that when a couple goes into the mountains men is responsible for women. Which is sexist. Both are adults, both can take care of themselves.
because cultural sexism. that’s why. innocent women must be protected from evil horrible men at all costs!
i bet if this story was about a gay couple you’d have a wildly different set of comments on here. and it would also be different about a lesbian couple.
but since it’s hetereosexual you have everyone projecting their sexism and relationship violence fears and generalizing it into some epidemic.
shitty people are shitty to each other, no matter the relationship. it has little to do with the sex of the people involved.
the truth of the story is probably far more complex and nuanced than is being told, but that would get in the way of the simplified narrative of an innocent woman being abused and neglected by a horrible man, onto which people can morally condemn and project how they’d never do that.
I bet if you looked at the numbers, it happens to ciswomen from cismen a statistically large amount of the time. Like at least three times higher than the others per capita. I mean, that wouldn’t be particularly surprising to me because queer couples tend to have different issues, but I am gonna take a wild shot in the dark and say that you have maybe one queer friend and thus know very little about the relationship dynamics.
I think if your problem is that women are complaining about men is sexist, then you are preemptively trying to shield shitty partner behavior when it’s done by men. To me, that reeks of someone that thinks it’s okay to be abusive to women, which is sort of a shitty person indicator, which, as you indicated, is because you are shitty to others.
I think if your problem is that women are complaining about men is sexist,
No one said this. The complaint is that women are painted as helpless in order to manufacture abuse. The man that continues the hike alone is in no danger because he’s man. Woman alone is in danger.
Before you say anything, yes, there can be many different situation where it’s not just about being alone. There can be difference in experience or someone can be left without supplies. None of the examples in the article alleges anything like that. All the described cases are simply women that are left behind by someone walking faster. One example is a women left behind by her male and female friends. The implication is that women left without a man is in danger which I find sexist.
Well, in spite of the fact that the person I replied to is definitely a misogynist (and thus sexist), I would argue that there is one hundred percent an intended bias in their message to try to defend men’s (specifically) behavior when it is abusive by downplaying it.
But, thank you for standing up for women! I was unaware that women being infantilized was, in fact, more sexist than saying it is okay for anyone to abandon their partners when they explicitly did not want to be abandoned! Was that your message? Because it’s weird that these women were saying they didn’t want to be abandoned and yet they were and that that fact must be about them being defenseless and not about abusive behaviors on the part of those men. How strange. Can you explain that?
Thos isn’t deflection, it’s someone trying to start a deeper conversation. You know, the whole point of a comment section?
I think the main takeaway here is that alpine divorce is an intent to murder. And yeh, it’s sexism. Not exactly in the way you’re putting it tho.
When they abandoned First Nations in Saskatchewan, and one made it back alive to tell people what was happening just like this woman is, the takeaway wasn’t that hey , gee, ya know they can survive being abandoned …it’s that they were abandoned to begin with WITH A VERY SPECIFIC INTENT TO DIE OUT THERE.
I think you not noticing that is the overall disgusting misogyny that society regularly overlooks and minimizes women’s right to life and safety should be considered not just that she can do it herself it’s that no one gives a shit if there was a chance she didn’t survive and how.
This shouldn’t be dismissed or minimized.
I think the main takeaway here is that alpine divorce is an intent to murder.
Assuming that women alone in the mountains will die is the sexist part. There are to aspects of this story:
-
men are breaking up with women in the mountains - if you can prove this is something men do but women don’t it’s a valid take. You can call it ‘alpine divorce’. It’s weird behavior. It would be interesting to learn why it happens (if it a real phenomenon)
-
more experienced hiking partners are leaving less experienced hiking partners alone in the mountains - this is shitty and dangerous no matter the gender. It’s about basic safety in the mountains
Both are valid concerns. It becomes sexists when you combine the two for no reason and assume women are always the less experienced person in the mountains. When I’m reading about it I’m imagining two adults going their way in the mountains. I don’t immediately assume one is responsible for the safety of the other only because of their genders. Because I’m not sexist.
The fuq did i just read. Looks like a manifesto written by a psychopath
Begone stupid bot.
Are you on drugs or something?
-
It’s sexist in the way that it might depict only women suffering from this type of behavior, but I think that women do tend to be the major demographic that suffers from this type of behavior, which, to me, is a type of sexism that is nowhere near as harmful as the behavior it condemns. It’s not saying they can’t hike.
This type of abuse can happen literally anywhere. You’re out in the city and you’re not walking fast enough? Get ditched with no warning. And that’s the problem. There is usually some modicum of control that the people ditching (you can read this as men) have over the situation that leaves the partner in a vulnerable state. Sometimes they drove. Sometimes they know the way. Sometimes they have the experience. It’s an abuse tactic to do something like that.
So, idk man, calling this sexist and then pretending there’s some unrelated problem to address is a weird take.
Thank you. Weird ass take, I thought we left this shit on Reddit?
When I first moved to Lemmy from Reddit it wasn’t this bad. Now it’s no fucking different than when I worked in a sawmill, surrounded by shitty men.
I recognize your username now that I’ve been on lemmy for a minute and I always appreciate your contributions here <3
This place has a misogyny problem and looks no different than 4chan or early days of Reddit.
So it’s not just me thank you! Shocking to see. Honestly I feel impotent towards it, idk what one can do apart from organizing, and if one is to organize, what to do?
I think we just keep existing and being firm in our points of view. Downvotes from pouty men are a badge of honor now lol
Right back atcha Velma. Always good to have comrads fighting beside you. :)
You’re overlooking that men tend to be attracted to this sort of activity more and may have greater experience. When they invite their inexperienced girlfriend, they have a duty of care towards them. You’re right, sex doesn’t matter and this could be reversed, but you need to ask yourself where the statistic lie.
This is not sexist. You’ve found the wrong conclusion.
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.”
Yep! Also touched on in the article.
men tend to be attracted to this sort of activity more and may have greater experience
I live in hiking prime area. This is not true in any way.
Men historically outnumber women hikers, but the split is relatively close. Like 55-57% of hikers are men with women and non-binary making up the rest.
Not enough to suggest the “men are innately better hikers” thing the person I was replying to was alluding to.
You’re overlooking that men tend to be attracted to this sort of activity more and may have greater experience.
They didn’t suggest men are innately better hikers. They literally said men are attracted to this hobby in larger numbers and tend to have more experience doing it.
men are attracted to this hobby in larger numbers and tend to have more experience doing it
That’s my point. I call bullshit on that.
The gender breakdown of avid hikers results in more men than women hiking. About 55-57% of hikers are men.
I’m really not trying to like argue with you or anything, I just think you’re misreading what they meant. There are more men that hike than women statistically.
Yes but the story of MJ doesn’t talk about experience. It’s just talks about gender.
because it’s rage bait. It’s not about hiking, it’s about men being awful to women and fanning the flames of gender war rage.
fanning the flames of gender war rage.
Seeing as that’s you doing it I would think it’s only you who can stop it.
Balanced take. This kind of thing is very veryserious. But also a dilution of the term Alpine Divorce, which people have died from.
Any of these women in the stories could have died while alone on a hike. That’s sort of the point.
But it is also not true? Any more than you could die anywhere.
You don’t think it’s more dangerous out in the wilderness than walking an aisle in a Target?
I disagree that a popular trail with many people can be called wilderness, but I would be okay calling it a backcountry location.
There are not too many things that can harm you on such a trail compared to another comparable physical activity, like playing soccer on a field for instance. The main difference is that it is harder to get to definitive care if you do get hurt.
On the soccer field, the ambulance pulls up in 5-10 minutes when you sprain an ankle or get stung by a bee and your airway closes up. On the hike, ideally you splint yourself and walk out if you roll your ankle, And do anything you can if you get that bee sting and have a life-threatening anaphylaxis, including call 911, lie down flat on your back, take bandadryls if you have them, and use your epipan if you have it.
But in both these cases you’re never really alone because there are so many other people. And on the trail, there’s probably a higher chance of encountering somebody with first aid training than on the soccer field.
To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly the context of your question was, but I assume it has something to do with leaving somebody to hike alone on these popular trails like angel falls or delicate arch in general.
In the specific example of the article, I don’t think it was a super big deal that the original person left her to go home with another woman, because she didn’t seem too much in danger, just emotionally hurt. She even told him to go on and hike ahead of her. In the worst case, there are plenty other people who would help her if she were to roll an ankle, have car trouble, or something. And she had cell service the whole time. To me, this isn’t that different than getting up and leaving somebody in the middle of a jog in a nice neighborhood that you arrived at separately, if you had a fight with them.
From reading these other comments, though, a lot of people seem to feel like being left alone on a hike would be more stressful than being left alone in the front country, which I don’t really understand, but I can accept that people would feel like that. I would hate to be abandoned at a party or at a bar, for instance – It’s not somewhere I’m comfortable at all. And I’d much rather walk back to my car alone on a popular well marked trail in the daytime.
The example of the woman at Delicate Arch is more confusing since it seems she actually was having a medical issue of some kind giving her vertigo. I don’t think the two should have separated in that case, but it’s really hard to decipher what actually happened in that situation, Especially having just one side of the story.
The example that involved the woman dying in the mountains is wildly different to me. I really don’t like how much male ego the guy seems to have in that he had abandoned previous partner on a different trip and how he had declined a helicopter rescue for both of them when they were first in trouble. In my opinion, he killed the person he was with by doing that.
There seems to be no world to me in which the situation on the angel falls trail is at all comparable to the gross negligence in that last example.
I live in an area that is densely wooded and has many, many hiking trails of various difficulty. It is always taught here that you need to be aware and ready for danger on any hiking trail, no matter how popular.
Wild animals and falls are absolutely a thing that makes being in the wilderness more dangerous than say a soccer field as you used for an example.
I don’t think it’s ever ok to leave a hiking partner except in cases of emergency when there’s only 2 people in the group and especially not because one of those people is being a jerk and won’t explain why or what they’re feeling or want to do. The lack of communication from the men in these situations outlined by the article is astounding especially for those situations.
I think we will have to agree to disagree on some points and that’s okay. On extremely crowded trails, danger from wildlife is just not common where I’m from. If I was in California, maybe I would have to worry about mountain lions, but even they do not like crowds, so I’m not sure what wild animals you are considering a risk. I think probably the most risky animal would be something you could get a bee sting and anaphylaxis from, which would be more dangerous in the back country, I agree. But it doesn’t seem significantly different if you are hiking alone and the person right behind you calls 911 in 20 seconds when they reach you, or if the person right next to you calls 911.
Some trails have fall potential and some don’t. It would be a very different thing to leave somebody to attempt half dome on their own versus a nice hike in the woods, even when going up to a pleasant summit.
I’ve heard kayakers say never boat alone, but where I live at least the same thing is not true for hiking, mountain biking or even rock climbing for that matter. Maybe that’s a rule of thumb in your area that just doesn’t exist here. I would definitely never ever swim alone, though. The common training here for hikers is to carry the ten outdoor essentials even on easy hikes, and practice leave no trace, including step 1: Always let somebody know where you’re going and when you’ll come back.
To me the biggest issue here is communication. If I was expecting to meet my hiking partner back at the car, but when I got there they had driven off already, I would be really miffed, not knowing what happened. It would be even worse if their car was there, but they were not there.
On the other hand, if they told me, hey, I’ve got to leave early, I’m going to head back to the trailhead now, and I said, okay, fine, I’ll see you next time and finish the hike on my own. I don’t see any problem doing that. To me, there’s no set in-stone rule against hiking alone, the way there is for swimming alone or boating alone, because it is just not as risky, and, in fact, is quite routine. That’s why it’s hard for me to call most back country areas near me ‘wilderness’, because they are so close to civilization, so dominated by human impacts that there is just so little added risk that you wouldn’t have in the front country.
I’m referring to bears, wolves, coyotes, and wildcats primarily. California is similar. There’s large swaths of the US that are still very much wilderness even if there is a human population nearby.
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
Neither do you.
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A new kind of serial killer 😂
Some of these comments are absolutely disgusting, many of you guys desperately need to talk to a therapist. If you read a story like this and feel the need to defend your gender identity, you have some deep-seated insecurity which you should take seriously before it starts harming your relationships with others. I am saying this as a man who had deep-seated insecurity which took a heavy toll on my relationships before seeking years of therapy. It’s not as expensive as it sounds, I promise, and it could totally change your life for the better.
+1
I’m honestly ashamed of my sex.
I get it, I’ve witnessed guys have gut wrenching experiences with women, but… come, on. Do y’all have to internalize that as misogyny?
what if my therapist helped me identify that it was my unreliable girlfriends who were the problem in the relationship, and not myself, and helped me stop dating people who were seeking to exploit me through emotional manipulation and victim-framing narratives rather than taking accountability for their own choices?
and after that my life improved immensely and my family and other relationships grew?
I’m really glad to hear that therapy helped you, thank you for sharing that - I hope that helps other men who have similar struggles as you to take the plunge and get the help they need.
On a personal note, though, I just had a quick look at your comments and honestly, it feels like you still have a lot of unresolved issues here that you’d benefit from getting off your chest in a safe environment, so I’d suggest more therapy. I’m sorry that people have hurt you, and that isn’t your fault, but if you continue to let it dominate your life, it will hurt you in ways that you’ll never really understand.
Much love & solidarity.
Right, because you are clearly a therapist and my comments that you find disagreeable clearly mean I have unresolved issues… because if I was ‘healthy’ I’d be in full agreement with you, right? It can’t be there are multiple legitimate viewpoints and people have difference experiences. Nope.
You piss and moan about men, but I doubt you self-reflect enough to ask yourself why it is you have to shame and belittle others if you are such a ‘secure’ individual. Probably because you are still massively insecure and intolerant of anyone who doesn’t share your views on gender and you are projecting your ‘redemption narrative’ onto everyone else.
To me your post reads like someone who is desperately virtue signaling they are ‘one of the good guys!’ I’m sure plenty of your exes would disagree.
And the irony of my experience is that your reply, is ALWAYS the one I get for sharing my experiences. ‘oh no if women hurt you you clearly are forever in need of therapy forever because you can’t ever move on if you mention it’. As it isn’t a massive the issue with men isn’t that they are constantly and endlessly shamed and dehumanized the second they express negative experiences with women. It’s always their fault and their burden to never be publicly expressed.
Apparently I’m only ‘healed’ if I only ever talk about women as as victims of male abuse… never the fact that many women are awful people, because women are just people like men and both men and women are objects and subjects of abusive behaviors.
I’m not shaming or belittling you, I applaud you for seeking out therapy and I encourage you to continue to do so.
Can I ask what made you consider therapy in the first place?
Some of these comments are absolutely disgusting, many of you guys desperately need to talk to a therapist. If you read a story like this and feel the need to defend your gender identity, you have some deep-seated insecurity which you should take seriously before it starts harming your relationships with others
No, you are shaming and belittling men.
And now you are trying to cast aspirtions that my ‘therapy’ is fake and false because it didn’t lead to the same conclusion as yours. Just like the idiots I meet who tell me if I am not in life-long therapy I must be emotionally damaged… which always comes from people who have spent their life in therapy never resolving their own issues. Project, project, project.
Post-edit reply: I’m not saying anything disparaging about your theraputic journey - again I applaud you for doing it, and I encourage you to continue. I think that’s really healthy. But you have to realize, that what you’re doing here, is you are taking something I wrote, which wasn’t aimed at you, personally - that’s a classic sign of an insecure person, right? Again, no shame there, I want to help you become the best version of yourself that you can be.
Nah I’m calling you out on your sexist commentary that men need therapy if they doubt some bullshit rage bait article that is trying to claim all men are plotting to abandon their girlfriends on the tops of mountains, based on one lady’s teary eyed tiktok vid.
The entire thing is absurd and manufactured to illicit outrage based on forced gender generalizations, and lots of folks here and eating it up. All you have to do is make the story a gay couple, or a non-romantic relationship, and the entire thing would collapse.
Do you think it would be as equally as ‘outrageous’ if it was a gay couple?
Your feelings are valid, and I apologise if it came across that way, I definitely could have worded it better. It’s okay to be insecure, there’s nothing there to be ashamed of, as I wrote in my own post, I struggled a lot with insecurity myself.
Two people, can just not be right for eachother. It’s okay to date someone and not have it not work out.
Totally. But that’s not often how people see things when they are emotionally charged or the relationship was fraught from the start. And a lot of people engage in self-fulling prophecies or self-destructive behaviors. Many people only pursue relationships they know are going to fail, for example.
You also can try to break up with someone and have them physically attack you and stalk you for weeks later and they don’t back off until you threaten them with legal/police action. You never know how people are going to react.
This is true. It took me three years one time to get rid of, a well, we will call a pest. Three years. Aweful. I don’t harbor any hate to them anymore though, Ive healed and found myself.
But, as Im trying to teach my young son right now, we can’t control what other people do or say, we can only control how we respond to it. Noting, there is a big differene in reacting, and responding. Lessons I wish I got as a kid ya know? Its good stuff.
You should book another therapy session because you still obsess over those ex girlfriends daily.
I know this isn’t really the same, but the article struck a chord with me and the experiences I have with my fiance. She convinced me to buy and play Arc Raiders. (It’s an extraction shooter.) This isn’t the type of game I normally play. I am not good. She made a run for an extraction point, and didn’t wait for me to be in the elevator before pressing the button to extract, leaving me stranded with the enemy everywhere. (She’s run way ahead of me in game before and I’ve taken issue with it and explained I feel abandoned when she runs way ahead without me.) The last time we played, I happened to make it to the elevator before her, and I made a point to say, “are you in the elevator,” before pressing the god damned button.
Obviously, I wasn’t in real danger, but those experiences have made me wary of depending on her.
As you said no danger in your situation but it seems like your fiancee had the same mindset as the hikers (inpatience and disregard for other persons wellbeing).
Lots of people have that mindset. Regardless of the relationship. And lots of hikers have total disdain for anyone who is slower or less experienced than them. I had one hiking date where the woman was pissed off at me that I was not as fatigued as her, because she was more experienced, but I was fitter than she was, and she kept warning and lecturing me about how I better not fall behind her. She also lectured me on my poor gear choices.
Then afterwards she changed her tune about how ‘impressed’ she was that I was as good at hiking as she was. Least to say I stopped seeing her shortly thereafter because of her need to constantly condescend about everything. She was French, so maybe it was just a cultural thing.
Book that therapy appointment. You’re obsessing over ex-girlfriends again.
Exactly why I started refusing to play video games with my ex-husband.
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.
Was she dating my ex-husband? He would do this to me when we went rock climbing. To the point where the people there didn’t recognize me at all even though he worked there.
Ugh, that is the stupidest, irritating thing. I felt disgust through the screen.
There are lots of parties where I don’t speak with my partner at all, but we’ve been together for nearly 15 years. That’s not how it works in your first… I dunno, three years?
See, when my wife starts to walk too slow I usually just grumble a bunch, then take everything she had with her, grab her hand, then tow her along.
That way she gets some help going faster, I know when I’m going too fast and can slow down, so when we finally get to the mountain top it’s easier to throw her off instead of having to chase her while she runs away screaming for help…
Why not just slow down and match her pace?
Why not just speed up and match my pace? /s
But really though I have a fast pace, my normal walking speed is like 3+ mph, I do slow down. But even slowing down I walk a bit faster than her.
Because speeding up is a lot more difficult than slowing down. You’re coming across as kind of a jerk to your wife!
Personally I feel it is a pretty jerk move to expect me to make all the changes necessary to sync up. I slow down a bit, she can speed up a bit. That way we match
Sorry, but I’m not going to put myself at risk by hiking so fast that I get out of breath.
Also, if I’m trying to enjoy nature, I’m going to find a hiking buddy who won’t mind if I hike at my own pace. If I’m going too fast, I don’t enjoy it.
If I were your hiking partner, I’d probably start out the hike with you and then say, hey, you go on ahead at your own pace. Let’s meet up at such and such a place. I would absolutely not want to be rushed ahead. And if that didn’t work out, I just would not go on hikes with you again unless there was a way we could both enjoy it on our own terms, or unless it really meant a lot to you for some reason.
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.
Damn, you’re both lucky things didn’t go worse. “I told them it was too dangerous, then I left them alone anyway, and they died from their injuries” would be a hell of a thing to have on one’s conscience, let alone one thing to admit on the defendant’s stand.
I mean, you’re (presumably) an adult who can take responsibility for your own actions, but if she was truly concerned for your safety, abandoning you makes no sense. No matter how skilled my partner might be, I’d be waiting at the edge watching like a hawk, not saying anything, just making sure their stunt didn’t end the way I feared it would. There’s plenty of time for arguments about it when we’re both back on solid ground. Literally turning away and walking off at the height of a dangerous act while alone in nature doesn’t say “I’m concerned about your safety” as much as it says “I’m emotionally-immature and can’t prioritize your actual well-being above my personal feelings.”
Glad to hear she’s an ex.
You are very correct. We both could have regretted the events much more than we did.
When I see parents take their smaller children places, I count them as “not dangerous.”
This is where I was.
People will photograph each other chilling there all the time. I don’t want to get close enough to see over the edge since I don’t like heights, I just wanted to walk on the creekbed.
This is still at the top of the falls, but more indicitive of the side of the falls where she “disappeared” on me and what I was looking for her in. What I bounced off on the way down was three or so of those big boulders to the right of the tree there.
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.
Walk back silently while in sight of each other, or if you really need time and space, take it while neither of you continues to hike. Or just fucking get a hold of your emotions to finish the damn hike.
Especially on a hike, it’s far safer when you’re not super upset about something.
You can have a fight and still look out for each other’s wellbeing. If this was a walk on very safe flat terrain, maybe you’d have a point, but this was kilometres of intense scrambling and climbing over steep boulder fields with serious risk of injury. I’m a OK rock climber, and there were parts that freaked me out.
