That’s not the same, in my opinion. Sure, all kinds of stuff happens out there, and people do get killed on occasion. The alpine divorce is a special case where a life partner was literally left behind and only one came out the other end, and not by dragging his dessicated quasi-corpse by the fingernails to the nearest road or some such. These cases go to trial, and result in convictions.
Does it count if you just leave her behind while hiking through the shopping mall?
Reminds me of when we visited Alaska and I was separated from Mrs. J. on a hike up to a glacier. But this was about half a mile in on the easy part of a popular trail and she turned back when the ascent looked a little dicey. There were no other mammals in the vicinity except marmots.
Sounds like the start of a Monty Python sketch.
This.
What is striking about the incident on the Großglockner is that the Alpine Rescue Service arrived by helicopter, as they knew the two people had set out in bad weather and quite late, and were searching for them. The man refused their help and sent them away. He then turned off his cell phone so that the mountain rescue team could no longer contact him. This behavior is difficult to understand. No one will ever know, since his partner is no longer alive, but it would be very interesting to know how the communication between the two unfolded.
Is there any examples but where they got separated because the woman stormed off in a huff after an argument?
The “Alpine divorce” doesn’t seem like a great way to murder someone and get away with it. From the OPs own links it seems like there’s a lot of scrutiny from law enforcement and society in general when a couple goes into the wilderness and only one comes out alive.
There is the deer hunting divorce.
Mr. Hunter if your wife or girlfriend suddenly wants to learn to shoot and go hunting with you. Beware.
The woman did not storm off anywhere in this case, she was sitting/laying down too exhausted to move on. The case was read in Court since the man left her behind without any supplies leaving her freezing to death.
If her name is Bambi, both sides need to beware.
Good job! Anyone who laughs at someone who sensibly brings the Ten Essentials is a fool and is likely to become a statistic at some point (or at least make the news).
Not all “day hikes” stay day hikes. You should always plan to spend the night in the backcountry in case of injury, getting lost, slower-than-expected pace, bad weather, etc.
On hikes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, it can be warm and sunny at the trailhead, and 40 degrees colder a few thousand feet up. Then even colder when the sun goes down. People routinely die when the weather deteriorates.
Just in case anyone is as confused as I was, “alpine divorce” has never been a term that had any currency. It was just the name of a story from the 1890s, so if you’d never heard of the story, you’d likely never had heard of an “alpine divorce.”
To avoid confusion it is quite helpful to read the OP of the thread.
Depending on the situation, researchers might disagree.
To be fair, it’s possible to find links that disagree. I just don’t think it’s anywhere near as clearcut as your statement implies. Many things I’ve read suggest that women are more likely to survive than men in extreme circumstances.
There’s been plenty of murder trials because man and woman hiking up to a cliff and one comes back alone with a mysterious story to tell.
That may well be true. In cases where a woman is left behind because she is too exhausted to continue, she is physically weaker than the man who keeps going. Incidentally, I am not concerned with whether men or women are more resilient. The point is the situation where a person (who could certainly be a man, though this hardly ever happens in practice) is left behind helpless, while the other continues on their way without caring about them. In the case described in the OP, the woman who was left behind froze to death. My question was whether such cases have also occurred in the U.S.
Whether men or women are generally better able to withstand extreme situations is not at issue in this context.
I’ve never experienced it myself, it was only recently that I learned the phrase, but I think I’ve seen it twice over the last few decades. There was an older couple on the trail, and back then “older” meant they must have been in their 60s, and the man was outpacing the woman by quite a bit. To the point where he was often out of sight and far enough away that hearing her if she cried out for help might be a problem. She wasn’t on the verge of collapse or anything, but she was clearly struggling to navigate her way uphill.
I couldn’t imagine leaving Mrs. Odesio behind like that.
I’m reminded of a hike I took with a girlfriend once in Yosemite park. We were on a narrow trail and I was in the lead. We weren’t staying particularly close and sometimes were out of sight of each other. At some point I realized that I hadn’t seen her for a few minutes so I stopped and waited for her to catch up. After a few minutes she didn’t appear and I started to get worried. Could she have fallen? I thought perhaps she had somehow gotten ahead of me, so I started hiking again as fast as I could to try to catch up with her and make sure she was ok. After 10 minutes or so I still hadn’t found her. I came across some people sitting by the trail and asked them if a woman had come past them in the last few minutes. They said they hadn’t seen anyone, so I decided to stop and wait to see if she was indeed behind me. After a few minutes, to my relief, she did appear. If the situation had been a bit different (rougher trail, worse weather, night approaching, etc), I can see how that kind of confusion could lead to a serious problem. And if it had, it would have been easy for someone to consider my behavior suspicious.
The first time I’ve heard of the phrase was this thread.
I only learned recently learned the phrase because of the Austrian man who ditched his girlfriend on the mountain.
I’ve but head that expression.
I was hiking with my son in Japan, and he did this (went ahead to a scenic point while i waited.) But we were part of a bus tour and i was with other people. And also, he didn’t get out of sight. Basically, we were hiking along the ridge of a mountain and there were very long sight lines. (We were probably out of earshot. But we took photos of each other at the distant point, which were stood photos of landscape with a dot-like human easy back.)
Neither of us was exhausted or in any danger, but my foot was sore and i couldn’t go quickly, and he wanted to make it to the scenic point. Still, i can see how a couple might agree to split up.
Wasn’t there a big criminal case several years back where this guy abandoned someone in the wilds, lied about what happened, and eventually got charged and convicted? There was a huge thread here on it.