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.
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.
One of the main drivers behind this story (i should say, i think one of the main drivers) is the more recent one where a man abandoned his girlfriend in the austrian alps at night and left her for dead, and it turned out he’d (allegedly) performed that same stunt before with a different ex girlfriend (who survived).
I’m sure your personal situation might be “he said she said,” but some of these people are comparably wild
People do stupid shit all the time. I live near the White Mountains where there are multiple fatalities a year now due to idiots going climbing unprepared, many of whom claim to be experienced.
It’s one thing for people to die hiking due to negligence or stupidity, it’s another to claim ‘SHOCKING NEW TREND: MEN ARE ABANDONING WOMEN ON HIKING CLIMBS TO DUMP THEM’
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.
Well, no. Your post is ragebait. What’s behind it is the same thing it always was. It’s just, ya know, a trend of men not respecting their partners. It’s not new. It’s not dramatized. It’s just that typically men do not put in the same level of thought, care, and compassion for their partners as women typically do.
These stories are pretty standard abuse, honestly. I’ve heard similar types of things about shitty partners abandoning someone at amusement parks, concerts, and other venues because they got pushed into something and then didn’t “fulfill their end of the bargain” or keep up to the level that the first person wanted. Yeah, it is usually men that do this, but it’s not exclusively men. Just, ya know, most of the time.
Like, I don’t really understand how your bad breakup experience covers for this. You are downplaying the event without knowing both sides as well. Why is it okay to do that, but it isn’t okay for some to potentially dramatize it? You’re not even involved, so I think it’s worse to do this weird defending, because it sorta feels like you might be misogynist. Like, them’s the vibes.
I don’t know why you think it’s 90% of people making this up, but, uh, okay, buddy. There’s definitely no potential abusive behaviors here that a partner should look out for, it’s just 90% chance it was a bad day or a liar or something, and not shitty or abusive partners.
sadly he’s been upvoted many times.
“We need to talk” has now been replaced by “We need to go for a hike.”
I imagine a good way to make your significant other sweat in that region is to leave your hiking boots by the door.
Balanced take. This kind of thing is very veryserious. But also a dilution of the term Alpine Divorce, which people have died from.
They’re just making a mountain out of a molehill.
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…
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.
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.
I would never leave my girlfriend stranded on a hike. I need her for if there is a bear.
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.
So like, some lady I’m on an early date with? Yeah no different in general rule. If I take you into a situation that you aren’t individually comfortable in I’m an asshole for ditching you there alone, even if we decide we hate each other in the meantime
What? No it isn’t. This isn’t about personal relationships, it’s about responsibility during a dangerous hike.
By the way: this particular hike is very very very safe.
How dare you!
With a male bias. Are you a misogynist by chance?
Are you a misandress, by chance?
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
Maybe because it is outside when someone is being insufferable you can just walk away.
Maybe “MJ” herself is a shitty person, and roped some equally shitty dude into a shitty time and he decided on the way up “fuck this lady” on a probably very easy day hike and ditched her.
Hmm yes must be the evil women’s fault somehow
DUDE! I hike. If you leave together, you FUCKING come back together. YOU want to break up, put on your big boy panties on do it AFTER everyone is home safe.
Also there is no such thing as “an easy day hike.” Anything can go wrong in the wilderness and lackadaisical thinking is what gets people killed.
There are plenty of safe and easy trails out there. Again. My point is if the dude found another floozy at the top of a mountain and went off with her 1) it was probably a very active trail and 2) both people were probably able to hike it solo and also kinda shitty.
I don’t care if they were the worst people on earth walking the easier hiking path on the nicest day of the year. None of that matters! They left on a hike TOGETHER, and needed to return TOGETHER.
Full stop.
Anyone who can’t follow that one simple rule has no business out on the trails.
Maybe she was shitty, but we know he was. You never abandon your hiking partner under any circumstances.
Reminds me of people going out and drinking and abandoning their friend who then gets SA. It is import to go out with good people not superficial cunts.
If you don’t like them then don’t hike with them again. It is that simple unless you are a sociopath.
The fact that he was reported to “hike down with some other woman.” And that she was able to complete the hike herself tells me it was a very easy trail and heavily populated. Just a dumb story of two assholes one of which decided to make her shitty date into an avenue of internet content for the hopeful attempt at gaining some influence. The dude was probably just annoyed and childishly trying to cause an issue with her and was like “I’m gonna walk the half mile down the 0 grade dirt path to the car with Stacy, babe.”
You don’t abandon someone period unless you are a sociopath. I get that you would abandon someone and let them die, get raped, assaulted, etc.
Choose your friends/partners very carefully.
We are just built differently I guess.
Oh no! If you leave a woman behind in any location she gets raped and murdered immediately!
I’m not saying abandon someone on a fucking backpacking trip in the deep country; just saying this story reeks of a rich old-millennial/young-Gen X content creator causing a noise to make some content for their socials and not a genuine “trend” of men abandoning women on fucking glaciers.
I don’t leave anyone behind.
You are full of shit.
Naw, I have gone out and made sure people get back safely more times than you can imagine. We are just different.
This sounds like what they called the starlight tours out in Saskatchewan.
deep racism where many people were outright murdered.
This shit going on with women is not seen as serious overall by society. It’s so very fucked up in two different fronts
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.
The amount and stuntedness of emotionally stunted immature men is only going up with social media…everything
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.
And some men wonder why some women would choose a bear.
I would choose a teddy bear over any human in the woods.
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.
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
