While media outlets are billing 'alpine divorce' as a tragic new dating trend, the phrase is being used predominantly by women sharing stories of survival.Illustration by francescoch
In 1893, Scottish-Canadian author Robert Barr published a short story about an unhappy married couple. Divorce at the time was no easy feat, especially if the parties weren’t guilty of adultery or abuse, so to get time away from his wife, the husband books a trip to Switzerland. Although she dislikes him back, she always insists on tagging along when he tries to escape. This time, he doesn’t protest and instead plans a hike from which only one of them will return. The title of the story: “An Alpine Divorce.”
Over 130 years later, the term “alpine divorce” has returned with a vengeance on social media. This likely stems from a recent criminal case in Austria that found Thomas Plamberger, a 37-year-old chef from Salzburg, guilty of gross negligent manslaughter after leaving his girlfriend to die on a mountain in the Austrian Alps last year. Plamberger was an experienced climber; his girlfriend, 33-year-old Kerstin Gurtner, was not. The judge ruled that Plamberger left her “defenceless, exhausted, hypothermic and disoriented,” after he neglected to get help or turn back in time to save her. Sealing the deal, a previous girlfriend came forward to say that Plamberger left her on the same mountain a few years earlier.
Since then, countless alpine divorce stories have surfaced on TikTok and in Reddit forums, ranging in severity from women who say their partners walked ahead and out of sight, leaving them briefly lost and scared, to others questioning if theirs intended for them to die. It’s impossible to say whether the posters knew of Barr’s short story when the term began trending, but chances are some historical literature nerd had a hand in it.
While media outlets are billing alpine divorce as a tragic new dating trend – and on the surface, it is – the phrase is being used predominantly by women sharing stories of survival. Through their storytelling, the term does aptly describe the power dynamic at play when intentional carelessness veers into abuse – but at the same time, they are rewriting the narrative of women in the wilderness as anything but weak.
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Maya Silver, editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine, was one of the first to share an alpine divorce story, reposting it on two different Reddit forums that triggered an avalanche of women to share their own. In Silver’s case, early on in her climbing career, she and an ex-boyfriend went for a hike. He was the more experienced hiker and, after a fight, he rushed ahead, leaving her alone for at least an hour without supplies or a map. While she doesn’t think her ex had any intention of abandoning her out there, the fear of getting lost, or worse, was real. The experience taught her to always be independently prepared, and she hopes the new trend – even with its jarringly playful name – will end up helping others do the same.
“Alpine divorce is somewhat of a euphemism – it sounds like a couple just went to the mountains and got divorced or had an affair or something. The term doesn’t explicitly suggest that a victim is left behind or murdered. But euphemism or not, the term is attention-grabbing, which in effect seems to be getting more people to talk about it,” said Silver.
In that way, these survival stories give off a whiff of girl power, especially given that the cruel behavior feels like an extension of manosphere culture. The manosphere is built on a premise of men as women’s protectors – but that “protection” can quickly move sideways if a woman questions a man’s leadership, explained Luc Cousineau, a Dalhousie University faculty member whose research focuses on men and masculinity in online spaces. He says the advent of the term alpine divorce helps bring that to light.
“Being able to name it in that way allows for a grappling of something that felt sinister or uncomfortable but didn’t have a hook to hang those feelings on.”
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Alpine divorce resembles another act of naming that swept social media a few years ago, which also combines nature, gender dynamics and safety: “choose the bear.” The phrase came in response to a question: If you are alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear? In most cases, women chose the bear. Both are dangerous, but one is less predictable.
Although on the whole, alpine divorce can empower women, one of the dangers of it being spread on social media is the risk that it gets twisted by a medium meant to entice clicks with the gothic beauty of snowcapped mountains.
“People who put out these alpine divorce stories often pair it with images and a soundtrack,” observed Shelley Hulan, a professor at the University of Waterloo who studies 19th century Canadian literature. “There’ll be an image of a girl crying and she’s walking away. Then you go to the comments, where people share their own survival stories.”
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While it’s a positive to turn an abandonment story into one of survival, it may detract from the “brutishness and cruelty of the story that attracted the cascade of comments in the first place,” she added.
Although Barr’s original “Alpine Divorce” story doesn’t include survival, the cruelty is matched with a sort of payback. During the hike, as the man is about to push his wife over the ledge, she tells him she suspected his motives. Before he can deny it, she rips her clothes and jumps, framing him for a murder he was going to commit anyway. It’s a dark ending for a dark tale, but at least in today’s version, she could pull out her phone in self-defence and film him as he walks away – later posting a clip set to some ominous tune by Lana Del Rey.
In this modern retelling, the only thing that dies is the alpine divorcé’s reputation.
Leah Eichler, a self-proclaimed word nerd, writes regularly about our evolving use of language.