184. Alpine Divorce Horror: Husbands Who Leave Their Wives To Die On Hikes
episode
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
43 min
1 speaker
4 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to another episode of Heartthroats Pounding in our dark summer series. As always, I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. Last week, we covered a mysterious cruise disappearance, and I wanted to thank everyone who listened and reached out. I put a little anonymous confessions box on our Instagram, at heartthroatspounding, To see what all of you thought of cruises in general, and your answers did not disappoint. Someone wrote, there's nothing scarier than looking out at the dark water at night, pure nightmare fuel. And another person wrote, after watching the poop cruise documentary, I don't know if I could ever go on one. And that's, of course, referring to the Netflix documentary that came out.
And actually a lot of people said that they thought they'd get too seasick to ever go on a cruise and that they actually have a fear of throwing up. And fun fact, I too have that fear of throwing up. I didn't know it was that common and I don't know why we all have it, but solidarity at least. This week we are pivoting and we're talking about a phrase that I've seen all over social media. Alpine divorce. The idea that sometimes your lover will take you on a hike and leave you on the mountain to die. I started researching stories that relate to this phrase and oh my God, I could write an entire book about this. This happens way more than I would have ever thought. But today I want to tell you about two of those cases that I could not stop thinking about.
And after listening, I don't think you will either. As always, if you have case requests or scary stories that you want to send in, I love reading them. We have a form at HeartSidesPounding.com. And you can now sign up for our free newsletter on Patreon.com on our free tier, where I give HeartSides Pounding updates and include some recommendations on what to watch. This week, I'm including a cruise documentary that I do think you'll want to check out. All right, let's get into the episode. At 5.54 p.m. on September 29, 2012, a 911 dispatcher in Colorado got the following call.
911, what's the address of the emergency? Hello, my name is Harold Hinton. I'm in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Okay. I need an Alpine Mountain Rescue Team immediately.
58-year-old Harold Henthorne told the dispatcher that his wife had fallen and needed to be rescued. He said that they had been hiking off trail on Deer Mountain, taking photos from an overlook, and she had stepped back and lost her footing. She was now at the bottom of a cliff and he needed help fast. The dispatcher starts asking him a couple questions, just trying to get a better understanding of the situation. And for a man that just watched his wife fall off of a cliff, he seems rather measured.
How far is the fall, sir?
He describes how far his wife fell, like he's telling the dispatcher how far he can throw a football. And then, less than four minutes into the call, while the dispatcher is still asking questions, he tells them that the battery on his phone was running low and he just disconnects the call. Now, the nearest ranger station was miles away from where the couple was. The trail that they were on was off the marked path, the sun was now going down over the Rockies, the temperature was dropping fast, and somewhere at the bottom of a cliff in one of the most remote corners of Rocky Mountain National Park, a woman named Toni Henthorne lay injured, or worse. Rescuers were immediately dispatched and tried to save the woman, but it was not going to be easy to get to where she was.
See, Deer Mountain sits in the southern reaches of Rocky Mountain National Park, just outside of Estes Park, Colorado. The Deer Mountain Trail winds upwards through strands of lodgepole and limber pine. It's very beautiful. The summit tops out at just over 10,000 feet. On a clear afternoon, the views reach out across the front range in every direction, mountains stacked behind mountains all the way to the horizon. But Harold and Tony Hanthorne were not at the summit. They had left the marked trail behind and scrambled down to an off-trail ledge, this remote rocky overlook roughly two and a half miles from the trailhead.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–4:27
2
What is the viral phrase “alpine divorce” and why is it trending?
4:27–8:30
3
What happened during Toni Henthorn’s 2012 fall on Deer Mountain?
8:30–14:54
4
Which inconsistencies in Harold Henthorn’s account raised investigators’ suspicions?
14:54–43:54
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
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193. The Sting Operation That Ended “To Catch a Predator”: Bill Conradt
192. Revisiting the True Story Behind Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
191. Mysteries of Nahanni Valley: Canada’s Cursed National Park
PRESENTING CLUES: Celeste Rivas Hernandez: The Case Against D4VD
190. Reddit Scary Stories: The Darkest Things Hiding in Plain Sight (feat. Angela Giarratana & Morgan Absher)