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.
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?
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?
Popularity in the news doesn’t equate to reality, any more than everyone saying “5 emails” makes it correct to do so. It just means it’s popular in the news because it sells more ad time.
That’s probably true.
But it makes it weird when a story about women being effectively abandoned in the wilderness elicits responses from (I’m guessing) men who feel targeted without any connection to these events.
It’s bait.
It’s a story designed to maximize rage engagement… and create gender war rage. and it is incredibly successful. look at the comments in this thread and how many of them are people flaming about how men are evil.
and now dumb people will read this and think there is some CRISIS of all men abandoning women malaciously and broadcast it all over social media or add ‘their stories’ to try and capitalize on the trendiness of it.
and around it goes, until next week everyone forgets about it and moves on to the next rage-bait story.
if you do wilderness first aid training, they do in fact tell you to leave people behind, especially in circumstances where it would get them aid faster or in which you staying would further hasten their demise.
but that has no bearing on this story.
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.
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.
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.