We really wish we didn’t have to talk about “alpine divorces.”
Over the past week, the unusual term has been trending on social media, particularly on Threads. The conversation stems from a TikTok video posted last month by a woman who said she was left alone on a hike after a man who invited her along abandoned her.
We reached out to the woman to verify the claims in the video, which has over 21.8 million views, but did not receive a response before publication. But in a new follow-up video, she said it all went down during a recent hike with a date in the North McCullough Wilderness area of southern Nevada. According to her, her date rushed ahead to beat other hikers to the summit and left her behind to catch up on the trail.
“He said he wanted to run and I remembered thinking, ‘Why are we chasing strangers to the top of the mountain?’” she said in the clip. (Good point!)
In the comments on the original video, women broadened the conversation, saying that having a partner leave you on a hike or any other outdoor outing was a surprisingly common experience. Some claimed that there were whole online support groups filled with women who’ve been abandoned mid-hike by men ― an “alpine divorce,” they labeled it.
