One afternoon in July 2024, Stefanie Peiker, a hiking guide in the Austrian Alps, came across a woman lying on the ground, heavily injured after falling off her electric bike.
“Her face was completely destroyed, she was bleeding and crying,” Ms. Peiker said. “The first thing I asked was, ‘Are you alone?’”
The woman explained that she’d been cycling with her boyfriend, Ms. Peiker said, but he had left her after an argument.
“I called the ambulance, took out my first-aid kit,” said Ms. Peiker, 31, who was on duty as a park ranger in a nature reserve that is part of a network of protected areas called Natura 2000. “Then, the boyfriend came back and screamed how stupid she is and that she destroyed his holiday.”
Though this was an extreme case, Ms. Peiker said she often comes across women who are alone on mountain paths because their partners are hiking ahead. So she wasn’t surprised when, during the past weeks, women on Reddit, Instagram and TikTok began sharing stories of being left behind by their partners while hiking, biking and climbing in nature, calling it “Alpine divorce.”
Often, the women described risky or uncomfortable circumstances where their partners had more knowledge of the terrain or more experience with the sport. In some cases, the couple met again, but in others, the women remained alone or relied on strangers to descend the mountain safely.
Andreas Truegler, 44, a squad leader and deputy head of mountain rescue in the Austrian Alps, said he was “shocked” when he saw the number of stories women were sharing about being abandoned in the mountains.
“This is not what you do as a decent human being,” said Mr. Truegler, who has been a rescuer for 17 years.
Alpine divorce has dark undertones: Even if done without the intent to harm, leaving behind someone less experienced in a mountain range like the Alps, where temperatures often fall below zero, and the weather changes unexpectedly, can lead to severe consequences.
Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist in New York City, said that being on the receiving side of an Alpine divorce can be a wake-up call for people in dysfunctional romantic relationships.
“It’s almost like a Rorschach test,” Dr. Romanoff said. “The issue isn’t the mountain, but the mind-set the person is bringing to the relationship and how they’re handling power and empathy and responsibility.”
The flurry of social media posts during the last few weeks appeared to have been triggered by a criminal case in Austria focused on a mountaineering expedition that ended in death. In February, Thomas Plamberger, 37, was found guilty of gross negligent manslaughter for leaving his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, 33, to die of hypothermia on Austria’s highest mountain, the Grossglockner.
“In the mountains, it can quickly become dangerous,” Mr. Truegler said.
Years ago, while climbing in the Swiss Alps, Mr. Truegler and his friends saw a man leave a woman alone at the top of a glacier.
“It was an area with many crevices, so it was absolutely not safe to walk there alone without a rope,” Mr. Truegler said.
After speaking to the woman, he and his group helped her reach safety.
“There’s the male ego, the pressure to be faster and stronger than others and to climb mountains not because of the beauty and the experience but to be able to tell someone some superlative that you reached,” Mr. Truegler said.
Dr. Romanoff said that this type of dynamic — where one partner’s desires or needs take priority over the other’s, even when that means putting the other person at risk — is common in unhealthy relationships. What this kind of behavior signals, she said, is “your needs are inconvenient to me.”
“The partner doing the Alpine divorce might have narcissistic traits where their validation comes from outside the relationship,” Dr. Romanoff said.
Off the mountain, this selfish behavior might be easier to excuse or brush under the rug, she added, but on the mountain, “it’s magnified. The combination of intimate partner betrayal and a very real physical threat is truly traumatic.”
In the Alps, the term “Alpine divorce” has existed for many years and refers to the act of killing a spouse in the mountains to end a marriage. The term is said to stem from an 1893 short story by Robert Barr, about an unhappily married couple. This week, it took on a chilling tenor when a man in Hawaii was convicted of attempted manslaughter after attacking his wife during a hike in Honolulu last year. The woman, Arielle Konig, survived.
Ms. Peiker said she first heard of Alpine divorce while in training to become a hiking guide in 2020. Max Eberle, 32, a freelance journalist and hiking instructor in Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, said that growing up in the Austrian Alps, Alpine divorce was a “rural legend” — something he’d heard discussed but never actually witnessed.
The current use of the term, Mr. Eberle said, described what he preferred to call “toxic Alpinism.”
“It’s very common that you see a couple in the mountains, and it’s always like the guy pushing his wife or his girlfriend to go further when she is totally exhausted and wants to go back,” Mr. Eberle said.
Last year, Mr. Eberle said he was leading a hiking group along a steep ascent in the Dolomites when they saw a couple arguing ahead. Suddenly, he said, the woman, who looked to be in her 60s, fell off the path.
“She was bleeding from her head, and on her knee, and she had a wide open wound on her leg,” Mr. Eberle said.
After administering first-aid, Mr. Eberle said the woman was still dizzy but walking. He urged the couple to call mountain rescue, but the man refused, saying that his wife was experienced and had fallen before.
Needing to keep moving forward with his group, Mr. Eberle repeated his suggestion and left. Mr. Eberle said he believes that the behavior he witnessed and other similar instances are caused by toxic masculinity.
“They want to score a new personal record or hike a new route,” Mr. Eberle said, “and in the worst cases, their partners die or are abandoned and traumatized for life.”
If faced with abandonment on the mountain, professional guides and rescuers in the Alps suggest calling for help immediately.
“If you’re afraid, go down with someone else, or call mountain rescue,” Ms. Peiker said. “It’s better to call, and it turns out that you didn’t need it, than not to call and then you do need it, but it’s too late.”
And if a partner abandons you while you’re hiking together?
She had one piece of advice: “Never meet this person again.”
The post If He Leaves You on a Mountain, End Your Relationship appeared first on New York Times.
