Alpine Divorce

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple and today we are talking about the phenomenon known as the Alpine divorce.

Royce: Oh, I only kind of know what this is. I think I overheard some of the things you were listening to recently.

Courtney: I’ve gone down a little bit of a rabbit hole. I have read a lot of articles. I’ve listened to a lot of opinion pieces about this, so I have thoughts. And the reason why I want to talk about it is because the case in question that sparked this big cultural moment talking about the concept of an Alpine divorce stems from a mountain climbing incident. And so naturally a lot of the people talking about this are mountain climbers themselves, or at least very experienced hikers, very outdoorsy people who are not just going on walks, they’re treating hiking very much like a sport, like a lifestyle.

Courtney: And while there’s certainly a very important conversation to be had for people like that, I think the underlying issue here goes a lot further than just mountain climbing and hiking. And I wanna talk about that from my own experience, as a woman who does have a disability, often uses a mobility aid, a walking cane usually, to walk around. And even when I don’t, I am very often the slowest person in most crowds walking. So I’ve got some thoughts. Given the fact that you haven’t gone down this rabbit hole with me, but maybe just being in my vicinity, what’s your overall knowledge of this?

Royce: My concept of this right now is that it was a general case where a couple goes outdoors on, like, a big hiking thing out in the wilderness and then intentionally separates. Like they no longer are doing the activity together. Which, even if you don’t factor in the danger of being out in the wilderness alone, if I was doing an activity with someone that was mostly their activity and we got there and they just decided, “Okay, bye. I’ll see you later.” I would be unhappy. It could be–

Courtney: Right?

Royce: It could be like a social event.

Courtney: Exactly, exactly.

Royce: The danger just makes it worse.

Courtney: Yeah. So this is primarily a phenomenon of men bringing their girlfriends along on a big hike, taking them mountain climbing, and then just up and abandoning them, like walking ahead, disappearing, going too fast. Apparently, it’s very common. And the reason why there’s a big cultural moment of lots and lots of women having a— having a time going, “Wait a second, I have had this happen to me. I had an ex-boyfriend who did this to me years ago,” or “This happened to me recently while I was out hiking.” A lot of women are just going, “Wait a second, is this a thing that happens a lot?” We’re talking about it now because of a trial in which a man recently was found guilty, not of outright homicide, but of gross negligent manslaughter after he left his girlfriend behind on a very dangerous mountain hike in the middle of the night, and she froze to death.

Royce: I don’t know that I would consider that negligent. I think that sounds pretty intentional. You just up and left in the middle— I’m thinking about movies where, you know, some sort of mob-related villain just drops people off in the middle of the desert. Like, the intent is to— for them to not make it back to civilization.

Courtney: Well, and the reason why we’re calling this phenomenon the Alpine Divorce is because there is a short story from the 1800s by this name. And in this short story, a man intends on taking his wife on a hike planning to push her over a cliff. Like, fully not even just leaving and abandoning her, but pushing her. This is his intention the whole time. When they finally get to the summit where he intends to push her down a mountain, she Reverse Uno’s him and is like, “I’ve told everybody that you’re planning to kill me, and they all know, and people are coming and looking for me and worried for me.” And then she throws herself off the mountain. [laughs] So, fascinating short story. But that’s where the title, the name, the concept Alpine divorce comes from. So without the high drama of that short story situation, it’s come to a lot of people’s attention that, yeah, even when it doesn’t result in someone dying, there are many instances of men leaving their partners on extreme hikes. And it’s– it’s funny that you immediately, without even any more details, pegged that this seems intentional.

Royce: How do you just leave in the middle of the night and it not be intentional? Like, what, what was— this person was convicted in a trial. Did they ever get his reasoning, like, from his own words?

Courtney: Yeah, I’ve got some, a very interesting, like, timeline of everything that happened here.

Royce: Because beyond that, if you didn’t want company during your hike, why did you bring company?

Courtney: So the timeline we have here: they started their climb up this mountain at 6:45 AM on January 18th. By 1:30 PM, they reach a spot on the mountain known as the Breakfast Spot. This is known as the point of no return before the summit. So this is for, like, known hikers. This is where you turn back if you do not think you can see this entire hike through. Because you basically will not have another chance to turn back. By 8:50 PM, prosecutors made the case that they were effectively stranded on this mountaintop. There is web camera footage at 9:30 PM from a– I believe a circling helicopter that saw light from the torches they were carrying. And a police helicopter fully flew over them at PM where they did not send a distress signal to it. At AM, this guy did speak to Mountain Police after several attempts by rescue services to contact him. So they saw their lights, they flew a helicopter overhead, they were preemptively, it seems, concerned for their safety and were trying to contact him.

Royce: Is it listed how they were trying to contact him?

Courtney: Uh, by phone.

Royce: Okay, so cell service worked here?

Courtney: Yes. So he finally spoke to them at AM after– after several attempts had gone unanswered by him. He spoke to them at , did not convey to them that they were in any sort of emergency situation. He then silenced his phone. 2 AM he leaves his girlfriend, allegedly he says to seek help because she can no longer continue the climb. 3 AM, they once again clocked webcam footage of his torchlight as he is now descending the mountain.

Royce: Were they pretty close to the summit at this point? Because you said they passed the point of no return.

Courtney: They passed the point of no return at 1:30 PM. 9:30 PM, they show them still climbing the summit but getting very near the peak, and then they don’t have eyes on either of them until the man, Thomas, is now—

Royce: Descending.

Courtney: Descending at 3 AM. Yes. At 3:30 AM, he calls emergency services. Shortly after 10 o’clock that morning, emergency services found her dead body. They also note that as an experienced mountain climber, he didn’t— First of all, he shouldn’t have left her in the first place. But if he was going to, allegedly, to try to seek help, why didn’t he do more or convey any sense of emergency when helicopters were flying over, when emergency services were trying to contact him? He also didn’t leave her with, like, you know, those safety blankets. Like, he didn’t leave her with any equipment like that. He didn’t set her up for her, like, best chances of survival before just leaving her either.

Royce: The fact that there was a call between him and emergency services earlier, I don’t have any way to reason not just turning your phone on and calling back.

Courtney: Right.

Royce: Aside from intent. Yeah.

Courtney: And the case that prosecutors made were saying that as of 8:50 PM, these two were effectively stranded. And they had multiple attempts between 8:50 PM and 3:30 AM to contact emergency services, including but not limited to a literal helicopter flying over them that they did not signal to. The call that he did answer at AM is a lot iffier. Like, one side is saying that he didn’t say that there was an emergency. His defense lawyer does say that he told them they were in need of help as soon as possible. But everything that’s at least been reported that I’ve been able to find so far about this is very much a he said, she said. And if he was actively trying to get help from that point, why did he not contact help until 3:30 AM again? Like, very strange timeline.

Courtney: So the interesting thing is this woman who died, her parents don’t think that it was his fault or that he was guilty of anything nefarious. However, the prosecutors called a witness, a woman named Andrea, who is this guy’s ex-girlfriend, and she testified that he took her to hike the same mountain several years earlier and also left her alone in the middle of the night. So she obviously survived, but her testimony, she says, “Once we descended the Glockner at night and suddenly he was gone. I felt dizzy, I screamed, and I was completely alone. From then on, we didn’t go on any more hikes together.” The same mountain. Just a few years earlier, he took a different girlfriend on the same mountain and abandoned her in the middle of the night. And like, thank God she lived to tell the tale, but it’s devastating that now she is testifying at a trial for the girlfriend after her who didn’t survive.

Royce: The “we didn’t go on any hikes together after that” makes it sound like they didn’t immediately break up after getting back.

Courtney: It does make it sound that way, doesn’t it? Yes. So when reading this guilty verdict, the judge effectively said, in this situation, even though you are both athletic people, you are the one who has more mountaineering experience. And therefore, if you bring someone with you who does not have the same level of experience, you are effectively their mountain guide. You are effectively responsible for making sure that good decisions are made, that you protect them if something goes wrong. And basically, you didn’t do that. So obviously this is a tragic case. A woman literally lost her life, and we found out in the process she was not the first woman this man did something like this to. It has gotten everybody really paying more attention to instances like this. And of course, as with all modern trends, if we turn to TikTok, there are tons of TikToks of girls making videos after their boyfriends abandon them in the woods, on a mountain, in the desert.

Courtney: A lot of, like, videos of a woman out alone in the wilderness saying like, “Point of view, you go on a hike with him in the mountains, but he leaves you alone by yourself and you realize he never liked you to begin with.” Or, “Point of view, your man leaves you behind on a hike.” And so naturally, lots of comments on these are saying like, “Yeah, girl, you’re not alone. There’s a word for this. It’s called the Alpine divorce.” Men be doing this shit. And mind you, I think for many of the women that this has happened to, I think a lot of them are going to be predisposed to downplaying the implication and severity of behavior like this. Because not every woman who’s ever been abandoned on a walk before is going to be on the highest mountain in Austria in the dead of winter, you know?

Courtney: So the fact that this has almost sort of woken up thousands and thousands of women, like, “Wait a minute, this happened to me. I just didn’t happen to be in as immediately a life-threatening a situation as that, but the behavior matches.” And that’s what I want to talk about today, primarily, and from my point of view. Because, naturally, since many people who are mountain climbers, and especially women who are mountain climbers, are talking about this, as they should, and talking about, you know, protection, how to protect yourself, how to not find yourself in these situations. On climbing.com, I found an article called “The Art of Empowering Yourself Against an Alpine Divorce.” And it’s all about how to protect yourself. But a lot of it is, you know, safety tips that you would give to any mountain climber, like give yourself plenty of time to get down before dark or before bad weather hits. Bring an emergency shelter with you. Make sure you have the right equipment.

Courtney: And yeah, these are good things to know if you’re actually climbing a mountain. But I do want to talk about this behavior because it is fundamentally abusive. And in situations that are not life and death, I do not think the average woman who– even if you experience it and you feel bad and you know that it’s wrong and you are upset with your partner for leaving you, I think if there’s no immediate physical threat to safety, a lot of people aren’t going to name it for what it is. But I’m going to. And it’s abusive. This is– this is abuse. And it is abuse whether or not you’re on a mountain, if you’re in a forest, if you’re at a fucking craft fair. I, I have— One of our earlier disability episodes when I was just talking a little bit about my own experience, about our relationship being an interabled couple, I remember just saying something about how much it meant to me that anytime we were out and about walking around, that even though your base walking speed is faster than mine, you always slow down to my level. You have never walked ahead of me.

Royce: I just don’t get the point for people that do that, whether we’re talking about mountain climbing or walking down a street. Like, the point of you being out of the house and doing things is to do things together. So what do you accomplish by walking ahead?

Courtney: There’s— I mean, as someone who has experienced this, I have had people in the past, whether it was a romantic relationship or very close friendships, there have been situations where there– there’s this like nagging underlying frustration that can very quickly turn into rage, that it’s, it’s at least under the guise of impatience. Like, “I wanna walk faster, so why aren’t you walking faster? If you can’t walk faster, screw it, I’ll just walk faster.” And sometimes it’s not, “I’m flat out abandoning you, I’m gonna go so fast we’re gonna lose sight.” Sometimes it’s just like, “I’m just gonna walk 50 paces in front of you at all times.” Even if they’re within eyesight the entire time, they’re, like, just out of reach. You can’t talk to them, you just see them in front of you and they just keep going. Like, that is a thing that is so very common. And that happens anytime there is a pacing difference.

Courtney: And I think in my average everyday life, I have seen this pacing difference and experienced it a lot more than the average person, because we’re talking about— you’re walking at a music festival, you’re walking between shops downtown, you know. We’re not talking about extremely physically demanding mountain hikes like this where ordinarily, maybe if you are just taking a leisurely walk, maybe the two of you are walking at the same pace. But as soon as you put additional physical hurdles in the way, maybe that gap will start to widen one way or the other. And in instances where it’s not life or death, it does feel bad, but it’s hard to name as abuse because it’s so easy in instances of, you know, disability, an instance of being the woman who’s always taught socially to accommodate everyone else’s needs before your own, it’s very easy to internalize and start to blame yourself.

Courtney: But what this fundamentally comes down to is someone who wants to control the pace of things. This is absolutely about control. Someone whose own patience, frustration, anger, whatever the underlying emotion is here, they are putting that above care and consideration for another person. In many cases, their own romantic partner. They’re putting their own selfish impatience before basic care and companionship. And in the extreme instances, as we’ve seen, physical safety. And of course I found an article on Out.com, so I had– I had to see what the popular queer take on this is. With the good old-fashioned, “What is an Alpine divorce? The TikTok trend that has us wondering if straight people are okay.”

Royce: I’m glad you specified what Out.com was because I had no idea. It’s like, is this another outdoors site?

Courtney: [laughs] No, out of the closet, not out of doors. But yes, the good old-fashioned, are the straights okay? Because mind you, we are predominantly talking about a power dynamic between men and women where usually it is a man who is leaving their partner who is a woman in these situations. That is the most common instance of this Alpine divorce phenomenon. So in this article, it references a TikTok where a woman is sobbing on a rocky trail hike saying that this is the worst Saturday of her life. And of course, comments calling out, “Hey, this is called an Alpine divorce.” And I think some of the experts they got to give their quotes on this topic are missing the mark a little bit, if I’m being honest. Because we have a divorce and family law attorney here who says, “An Alpine divorce is the disturbing practice of one partner abandoning the other in a remote wilderness or otherwise dangerous location as a way of ending a relationship without a formal breakup or divorce proceeding. Rather than having a difficult conversation or navigating the legal and financial complexities of separation, one partner simply leaves the other to avoid confrontation.”

Courtney: I don’t think that’s what it is at all. Even in the testimony by the former girlfriend there, just like you pointed out, Royce, the “we didn’t go hiking again after that,” it doesn’t sound like they actually broke up. And I don’t think that is actually what that man wanted in that moment when he did that. I don’t think these are instances of “I’m just going to disappear and then ghost you in perpetuity,” this is the last time you’re ever seeing this person. No, I think this is about control. This is abusive control. I think there are instances where I’m not necessarily trying to end the relationship, but I want this person to know that I set the pace. I control where and when we go. I can disappear in a moment’s notice if you can’t keep up with me. And is an element of potentially invoking fear in here in these situations where it is a wilderness situation. I’m sure that can be a part of it. I also think some men are just so selfish that they probably don’t think anything of it. They’re like, “Fuck it, I wanna go ahead, so I’m going to.” And nothing’s gonna come of it. It just is gonna be what it’s gonna be.

Courtney: Another divorce attorney here says that this situation happens because, quote, “They want to break up but are not mature enough to just be direct about it. They clearly want to make the other person so upset and abandoned that they will also want the relationship to end.” Maybe there are some instances of that. I haven’t necessarily seen any firsthand accounts where someone said like, “This fundamentally was the end of our relationship. This is the last time I ever saw this person.” I’m sure maybe that has happened. But I kind of think these lawyers are also not seeing this as abuse or as a power imbalance, which is what I think this is at a fundamental level. ’Cause abusers— I mean, think about different types of abuse, right? Let’s talk about physical abuse. Like, nobody’s ever going to talk about this like, “Oh, he hit his girlfriend because he wants her to break up with him ’cause he doesn’t have the guts to do it himself.” No, we don’t talk about abuse in that way because we know that is not usually the intention.

Courtney: And that’s why I wanted to get more firsthand accounts that weren’t just a woman actively making a TikTok as it’s happening to her. I wanted to see more instances of people thinking about it in hindsight, because when I think about my instances in hindsight, not wilderness, not hiking, usually. Usually. I’ll put an asterisk on that. And this is a very, in my experience, heavily gendered phenomenon. Because every time I have been in a relationship with a man, every time this was the first sign of abuse that I did not identify as such. Because it seemed so minor at the time, it seemed like something that could even be my fault, you know, most people do walk faster than me, so I’m the weird one here. It’s my fault. It’s me. But every single one of those instances where I was with a man who started doing this and doing it regularly, he became abusive in other ways later down the line. Every single time, every single instance.

Courtney: Now, anytime I have been with a woman or non-binary AFAB person — well, we’ll just say non-binary person, period, for that matter — either they have never done this to me, they have always come down to walk at my pace, or they very obliviously started walking ahead of me, and then once they realized what they had done, felt very bad about it and became more mindful and considerate of it and made an effort to come down to my pace every time thereafter. But with men, they knew what they were doing. They expressed their frustration, or even if it didn’t come out as frustration at first, it was a very pragmatic tone that they struck with. It’s like, “Oh, it’s not personal. This is just the speed I walk. This is how fast I have to go. It’s very hard for me to go slower than this because this is my natural body and biology, and this is the pace I need to go.” But now that I look about it in hindsight, and I can track my own timelines of those relationships and how they panned out, and how they got increasingly more abusive in more diverse ways, those were some of the first red flags that I could not and did not see as red flags.

Courtney: And that’s why I want to talk about this because so many people are talking about it in the mountain climbing context, the dangerous wilderness context. I think we need to talk about this as abusive controlling behavior regardless of the setting. Because when I go to Reddit — and this is on r/climbergirls that I’m on right now — talking about the Alpine divorce, here is a woman who is talking about an instance that happened to her over 20 years ago. She says, “When I was 21, I was dating a climber who taught me how to climb. I was really naive and I thought that his explosive anger when climbing, hiking, or backpacking was due to my beginner status. Anyway, he never fully abandoned me. One time he abandoned me at the parking lot of a small local mountain in Oregon. The police pulled him over on his way out of the park, and I was walking down the road. The police told him that if he ever did that again, they would arrest him. Anyway, that wasn’t the last time he abandoned me. He would just be filled with rage and either stomp off down the trail or throw my things off cliffs or the trail. I finally wised up and accepted that he was abusive and left him.”

Courtney: So this is in a hiking context, she blamed herself for not being as good of a mountain climber as he was. And that’s the pattern here. That’s what happens. This man was angry and frustrated and she thought it was her fault. And he never even abandoned her on the mountain, but he did abandon her in a parking lot. This abandoning behavior, if you start seeing it in one setting, it’ll show up in other settings. And this is why I think those divorce lawyers on Out.com are so wildly misguided, because they’re like, “Oh, he’s— he, he just wants to break up, but he’s hoping you’ll do it first.” I don’t think so.

Royce: No, I don’t think that’s the pattern at all. Like you said, maybe there are rare cases of that, but it doesn’t seem like that’s something you could apply as a whole. Also, I get that common patterns in any abusive relationship is the person being abused not realizing it for what it is. But if anyone in a relationship ever takes a possession of yours and throws it into the wilderness, end the relationship.

Courtney: Yeah, that– that is the escalation after the red flag that you couldn’t identify previously, right? Like, that, that is after the abuse has already started and it is escalating now. But— And I, I really do— I need people to know because— Well, let me ask you your take on this, because the two very specific instances I have from my experience, one would be very frustrated and angry and impatient when I was walking slowly. The other wouldn’t be outright angry but would still make excuses like, “I just can’t walk that slow. I just can’t do it.”

Royce: That’s a lie.

Courtney: Yeah!

Royce: There is nothing physically about walking slower that you just can’t. You’re refusing to.

Courtney: You’re refusing to, yes!

Royce: You’re making a choice.

Courtney: And if, like, mentally you’re more comfortable going at this pace, like, it’s, it’s not a physical limitation that you cannot go slower. If something mentally is telling you, “I need to go faster right now,” then that is once again you putting your own comfort and preferences over caring for the person that you’re with.

Royce: A big part of it could be insecurity and masculinity, though. There are guys who are proud of having a long stride because it’s something that old men said was important to them when they were kids.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s a great point. If you want a good old social conditioning reason for why it’s usually men who are doing this. So I have another woman here saying on the same Reddit conversation, “I haven’t experienced the Alpine divorce while hiking, but my ex-partner would frequently leave me behind walking after we had a baby. One time I was carrying the baby and walking our little dog on a leash when my partner decided to cut through a private property during a walk. I followed because he was familiar with the area, but he quickly sped off. The property owner’s dog attacked my dog and I got bitten while holding my baby over my head. The owners came out and looked at me like I was crazy for suddenly appearing in their yard. I was confused and scared and had jerked my dog up by the neck with the leash. He also disappeared while walking with me at a music festival while I was pregnant while we were in Canada. We live in Virginia in the US. Needless to say, I stopped going anywhere with him without my own car and eventually stopped going anywhere with him.”

Courtney: This is what I’m talking about. This is what I’m talking about. It doesn’t have to be a deadly exposure to the element situation. If you are partnered with someone who will just leave you, it is abusive and it can be dangerous even if the first couple times it happens you aren’t in immediate danger. Look, I— Music festival’s something I mentioned earlier as just a more casual place someone might walk away from you here, but she was pregnant and he left her when they were in a different country. None of this is okay, but this is the same underlying issue as the Alpine divorce. And we have this one. [reading] “Oh yeah, I dated a guy who did this on nearly every hike we went on for years. 20 minutes into every hike we did, he just left me behind, never stopping for a breather or water break. I wouldn’t see him again until Summit. I had absolutely no idea it was a common issue, and I thought I was just being sulky and dramatic because he always said we just have different paces and that I’m too slow and blah blah blah. He did it so often it just became a joke. He also did this when walking around in public places, even when traveling in other countries. Randomly, he would just stop talking, pick up his walking pace, and fucking leave me. Many times I had to find my own way back home or back to the hotel.”

Courtney: What did I say? What did I say. And see, even the women in these comments, if they aren’t literally being abandoned on a mountaintop, they’re— so many of them are adding a qualifier. This woman says, “This isn’t quite the same thing, but I went on a running date with a guy in the mountains. I had only hung out with him maybe 2 times before. We started our run in the evening and it was starting to get dark. While we were running, he started sprinting and completely left me behind on a trail I didn’t know while it was getting dark with no headlamp. He left me for a solid 10 minutes, but luckily he came back, but it was such an odd experience.” No, it’s not a different thing. That’s the— it is the same thing. This is exactly the same thing. And there are dozens and dozens of more stories of women sharing these experiences here. So, friends, women especially, if this ever happens to you, whether you’re in a similar camp to me where perhaps you have a slower than average walking pace, perhaps due to disability, or if you are out in the wilderness, trust your instincts. If something feels bad, it is bad.

Courtney: Don’t ever let a man gaslight you into thinking that just having dis— different paces is a good excuse for abandoning you. And please, please, if this ever happens to you or you witness it happening to somebody else, please see this for what it is. This is a fundamentally abusive practice. And if it is not something that they immediately fix after a conversation about this, please get out. For your own safety and emotional well-being. Don’t wait until you’re literally on the peak of a mountain to understand how very dangerous this actually is. But that is going to be all for today. So I am going to leave you all off as usual with our featured MarketplACE vendor. Today we’re giving a big shout out to TacocatCraftsStuff, where you can find shell earrings handmade by a neurodivergent, nature-loving, triple-A battery. Agender, ace, and aro spec, for those of you who do not know the lingo. These shell earrings are very cool.

Courtney: If you go to the Etsy page, it looks like it’s only one listing. This tripped me up at first, but do please click on that listing because if you file through all the photos there are several different types of shell earrings here. So you can pick out the color and shape that you like the best. I got some very cool sort of grayish-blue crescent-shaped ones, and these have all been collected from the beaches of Milford, Connecticut. So as always, links to find our featured vendor are going to be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box on YouTube. And in all those same places, you’ll be able to find links to some of the articles and forums that we talked about in today’s episode. And as always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.