Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash
Ah, the outdoors. The birds chirp, the leaves smell nice (well, honestly most trees smell like piss to me), and…uh…Well, I don’t know what else shit does out there. I am not an “outdoor-friendly” person. My disease prevents me from going outside for more than six hours at a time in most cases.
Like, it’s bad. Not only is hanging out in nature just unnatural for me in the sense that I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do, but it ends up makng me very, very, very sick. Like hallucinations, stomach pains, paralysis, pins and needles, and slurred speech sick.
It can be lethal, especially if I can’t find access to the right foods and supplements to balance my blood out. When I tried to camp, I ended up pissing brown and red for about two days afterward. It was horrible and I have no interest in reliving that.
So, when I heard about the crime of “Alpine Divorce,” I physically recoiled. If you haven’t heard about this, let me explain to you about this phenomenon making rounds.
“Alpine divorce” is a trend of men abandoning women on dangerous outdoor hiking trails.
Imagine the following situation. You are an outdoorsy girl who likes hiking and other nature things I don’t know about. You’re dating Brad*, a dashing lumberjack type guy who loves going on mountains for no apparent reason — just like you.
You had a couple of arguments lately. Things are rough. Your sex life has been draggy and he didn’t even use that XXL dildo you bought for him. But he came up with a great idea to reheat your relationship beyond cavoli riscaldati issue: a nice vacation hiking the Matterhorn.
You hike up the mountan and realie you’re not feeling well. You didn’t bring enough water and Brad chugged most of it. You get stuck for a bit from a brief injury. Brad says he will go for help. You tell him not to, but he vanishes along with your phone.
You begin to panic when you realize you’re stuck. You wait for hours. A group of hikers find you on their way up. You decide to just sit there and pray someone will find you, even though you’re getting lightheaded.
The sun is burning you. You feel like you’re going blind. You’re dehydrated, close to death, and sunburnt. It’s agony. They get you downhill, get you treated, and you call the police.
As it turns out, Brad took his sweet-ass time calling for help. He only called five minutes ago. You’re in the hospital, in serious condition. Betrayed doesn’t even begin to start how you feel.
Brad calls you, stammering and yammering about how he is “so happy” that you’re alive — no thanks to him. You ask him why he abandoned you on the mountaintop. He says nothing and hangs up.
A female police officer takes you aside and tells you that you’re lucky to be alive. She warns you that Brad probably wanted you dead. Worse? She gives you a support group name called “Alpine Divorce” for women who experienced this same type of abandonment.
Does this sound insane? Does this sound too cruel to really happen? Yeah, as a nature-averse, daylight-averse person, this is nightmare fuel. Yet, it’s apparently a thing because, of course it is.
No, this is not some kind of urban legend.
There are multiple professional therapists who can attest to having clients who experienced Alpine Divorce. The actual term itself went viral thanks to a TikTok video where a woman reveals that she was abandoned by her date on a hike.
In the comments, you can see multiple women talk about their own experience being abandoned in the wild by their dates. According to therapists who treated survivors, getting gaslit, blamed, or even having the abandonment minimized is common.
People have died from Alpine Divorce.
A recent case of this occurred with the death of Kerstin Gurtner, whose boyfriend, Thomas Plamberger, abandoned her. He was only convicted because his ex testified that she, too, was abandoned by him on the mountain.
In other words, he was trying to kill his ex. He succeeded in killing her successor. What’s wild is that people (including Gurtner’s family) allegedly blamed Kerstin for not packing well enough. He likely would have kept killing women if his ex didn’t speak up.
If I was left in the woods that way, I would have been dead meat. It’s lucky his ex was strong and healthy. Otherwise, Plamberger would have likely become a serial killer through this route and no one would have stopped him.
Despite the fact that he put his phone on silent so his late ex couldn’t call for help, he was not charged with murder. He was charged with negligent manslaughter. Sadly, we live in a world where that is still an improvement from how things were.
Seriously, though, this reeks of premeditated murder in my opinion.
The fact that this is common enough to warrant a name should scare women.
Personally, I’d never go alone, outdoors, with a man I’m dating. Like, not for nothing, but I don’t want to die and I have a valid excuse. Ladies, consider this a PSA from me: do not go hiking in parties smaller than three people.
Now, I want to give women a heads up on serious dating safety advice:
Do not hike with a man who you just met or a man who is angry with you. Most of the cases I read about Alpine Divorce involved one or both of these situations.
Always keep a means of communication on you if you do hike. Make sure it’s not just a phone. Get a flare or something for help. (I don’t know much about hiking.)
Do not go on a camping trick if your “spidey sense” is tingling. He might kill you.
We need to agree to name and shame men who try to kill women via Alpine Divorce. Yeah, let’s all agree that Alpine Divorce is not a “mistake” on the man’s part. It’s an active attempt on a woman’s life. Make sure to get his real government name before you hike and tell two people who planned it.
Fucking choose the goddamn bear. At least the bear will not pretend to like you, then murder you.
If the hike gets too much for you, turn around. Do not mind him bitching if you turn around. Your safety and your health matters.
If you survive, don’t just name and shame; dump his ass. And maybe report it to police.
We should push for Alpine Divorce to be treated as a form of murder. It absolutely is premeditated. And it’s a form of extreme domestic violence.
I’ve never been more relieved to be allergic to daylight than when I read about this shit. The fact that some men see this as a smart way to reveal their breakup to their partners is diabolical.
Stories like this are why women are increasingly leery of men.
I don’t know why I need to say this, but as a dating writer, I’m sick of seeing all these stories of horrible men. I’m also sick of men wondering why women won’t give them a chance while (in the same breath) telling women to “choose better men.”
Until men live up to their self-touted roles as protectors and providers, they have to deal with the women they allegedly “love” treating them like a threat. And sadly, I don’t see the schism between men and women getting any smaller, anytime soon.
On Loyalfans ❤
