"War broke out between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the 23rd of May 1915. It would involve millions of men and several pitched battles — including not one, not two, but twelve Battles of the Isonzo. Combat occurred at heights of up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) with the beautiful but deadly mountains posing challenges totally unlike those seen on the Western and Eastern Fronts."
—Isonzo's official description, describing the conditions of the Italian Front
Imagine a Death Mountain. The rough terrain, relative lack of oxygen, snow, and rockslides and avalanches are already deadly to anyone trying to scale the region. Now imagine soldiers not only trying to advance through such a place, but fighting for territorial control over the entire mountain. Combine that with trying to get food, medical supplies, and ammunition up narrow roads and goat trails, and you have a recipe for something deadly to anyone and everyone involved.
Depending on the region, civilian settlements can range from tiny mountain villages to thriving mountainside towns, or even a relatively large city built atop a plateau. Tanks may be virtually useless here thanks to lack of paved roads or even suitable roads for motor vehicles, so the best options of getting supplies in would be on foot, on pack animals such as mules, donkeys, and horses, or, in more modern settings, via air drop or helicopter. The soldiers tasked with being deployed to these kinds of regions will likely be elite troops trained specifically for these kinds of environments, with their rank and file usually hailing from similar environments, and their officers being experienced mountaineers when not on duty.
Mountain Warfare is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a trope that involves a military conflict taking place in mountainous and rough terrain environments. Much like in Jungle Warfare and Desert Warfare, any advancing army not familiar with the environment can and will be killed by the environment, sometimes even moreso than by their enemy. In addition, thanks to some partial overlap with Winter Warfare (namely some higher mountains being frozen over for most of, if not the entire, year), hypothermia, trench foot, and frostbite can also be potential problems on the battlefield.
In Real Life, the battles most associated with them in recent times would be World War I's Italian Front, fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Battles of the Caucasus fought in World War II's War in Europe and Africa, and the conflicts in Siachen and Kargil.
Compare and contrast with Desert Warfare, Jungle Warfare, Winter Warfare, and Urban Warfare, where fighting takes place in scorching and arid regions, lush tropical rainforests, frozen forests and tundras, and the ruins of villages, towns, and cities, respectively. May overlap with Snow Means Death if the mountains are a wintry or frozen place, with the snow and particularly avalanches just as deadly as falling from a high altitude, a rockslide, or an enemy ambush.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Armored Trooper VOTOMS: While most of the Kunmen Jungle War arc has its fighting done in the jungle, a few parts of this arc have fighting done in the high mountains surrounding said jungle, with Chirico setting up ambushes in narrow mountain passes and having to be wary of not falling off cliffs.
- Code Geass: The battle of Narita in episodes 10 and 11 see the Britannian army moving to destroy the Japan Liberation Front's headquarters which is built in a large mountain. Everything is going smoothly for them until Lelouch and the Black Knights throw a huge wrench in the plan by causing an avalanche via a subterranean steam explosion that wipes out 80% of the Britannian forces.
- Flag: The country of Uddiyana is a thinly veiled stand-in for Nepal (whose own actual civil war was in its final year at the time of the anime's airing) and several battles involve heavy use of helicopter gunships and HAVWCs deployed since they are the best options to traverse the mountainous terrain.
Comic Books
- The Punisher MAX: General Zakharov got his "Man of Stone" nickname during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while clearing out resistance fighters from mountain villages (helicopters were the preferred option, but they could be spotted from far away, letting the fighters escape). Zakharov's solution was to go up to a village, force the entire civilian population to the base of a cliff, and start tossing them over the edge. Zakharov didn't budge an inch when the hidden fighters opened fire, revealing their positions to the helicopters.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami's base inside a mountain is under attack by dwarves, who only use small forces to attack overland, instead using their highly developed, magically enhanced digging techniques to tunnel into her base instead.
- Shadows over Meridian: Jade leads an army of Phobos loyalists and Mantis Khan to the northern mountains to thwart just in time the rebel army that's on the verge of claiming victory over the Lurdens and Mogriffs at Snowpoint. The narration acknowledges that warring in snowy mountains is difficult; it's taken the rebels weeks to gradually surround the fortress and wear down the hardened natives. It's thanks to the flying skills of the shadow serpents and the Mantis Khan's Wall Crawl ability that Jade's army is able to reach Snowpoint in just a day and a half.
Films — Animated
- Mulan: Shang's troops are ambushed by the Hun army at a mountain pass. With the soldiers outnumbered and short on ammunition, Mulan takes advantage of the terrain by firing the last cannon at a snow-covered peak, causing an avalanche that wipes out the Huns, although a few, including their leader Shan Yu, survive to attack Beijing in the climax.
Films — Live-Action
- Many movies depicting conflict in Afghanistan, as the country's most treacherous terrain isn't the desert but the high mountains.
- 9th Company shows the difficulties the mujahadeen give the Russian forces as they are able to rapidly conduct hit and fade attacks from mountainous slopes and hills.
- 12 Strong: the movie's final battle takes place across a mountain range as the Green Berets and their Afghan allies have to charge down into the valleys to get past a Katyusha rocket truck bombarding their position.
- The Covenant (2023) shows Kinley and Ahmed having to evade Taliban capture as they are hunted across a mountain range. At one point Ahmed loses his AK rifle while he and Kinley are sliding down a steep slope.
- Lone Survivor, the story of Operation Redwings in 2005, has the SEAL team's first contact with the enemy occur on a mountaintop. All 4 of the SEALs sustain major injuries when they have to jump off a cliff to avoid explosives and go ragdolling down the slope.
- The Outpost depicts the true story of the 2009 Battle of Kamdesh as Combat Outpost Keating, which was foolishly built at the bottom of a mountain range, comes under massive attack by hundreds of Taliban fighters striking from the mountains and overrunning the base.
- Cliffhanger is about Gabe Walker, a mountain search and rescue worker responding to a crashed plane's distress call in the Rocky Mountains. The signal turns out to be a ruse set up by a group of terrorists who are trying to recover precious cargo from the crash site and they needed to kidnap a skilled mountaineer with knowledge of the terrain. Walker has to escape from the terrorists and ensure they don't succeed in their plans.
- Lakshya is a Coming of Age war film starring Hrithik Roshan about how a lazy entitled young man joins the Indian Army, becomes an infantry officer and fights in the Kargil conflict.
- LOC Kargil recounts the exploits of the Gorkha and Kumaon Regiments during the Kargil War. Attention is given to the actions of Lt Manoj Kumar Pandey and Captain Vikram Batra and their heroic actions that won them India’s highest valor award.
Literature
- 86 EIGHTY-SIX: The "Feldreß" spider walkers of the setting were originally developed by the Alliance of Wald, a small mountainous country that was able to use said walkers to employ rapid hit and run attacks on invaders by swooping down from mountain peaks and rapidly climbing slopes. The start of Volume 7 shows these tactics are still effective against the Legion, which is how the country has managed to survive the continent's decade-long Robot War.
- Alderamin on the Sky: While still Military Academy cadets, the cast get posted to the mountainous northern border of the Katvjarna Empire, and become embroiled in a rebellion by the local Sinack people intentionally provoked by the racist military governor. The hazards of mountain warfare become significant plot points: logistics are complicated by the narrow trails, and an entire battalion is lost after pursuing the Sinack too high and succumbing to altitude sickness, weakening them for a counterattack.
- Mockingjay: In District 2, the mountain fortress known as "the Nut" is the last major holdout of Capitol loyalists against the Second Rebellion. Its steep sides and near impenetrability cause the rebellion to take heavy losses. Gale Hawthorne comes up with the plan of using hovercrafts to bomb around the mountain, causing avalanches and cutting off the fortress' ventilation system.
- Only The Villainous Lord Wields The Power To Level Up: Title character Erhin Eintorian makes extensive use of the defensive boons of mountainous terrain. In volume 1, he foils a Naruyan surprise attack through his northern border by using the high ground of the mountains to protect his poorly trained troops. In volume 2, inspired by Hannibal's march through the Alps, he first takes his army on a dangerous passage through the mountains during the Brijit-Rozern War to outflank the retreating Brijitians and capture their capital before they can reach it. In volume 3 when his home Runan Kingdom is invaded by Naruya, he uproots his entire realm to his more defensible southern holding in Bertaquin, a mountainous region with its back to the sea, and rallies surviving Runanese nobles to his cause there for a planned counteroffensive.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Cookies and Campers involves the playing of a game where the player party is ascending what's described as a "small mountain" to try and reach the occupied ruins at its top, and those occupiers detect the party and have had years and years to build up strength and numbers to repulse such suspected invaders, but they really rely just on distance to keep people the only other people around, who live not-close to the foot of the mountain, from bothering them.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The long-running, possibly millennia-old conflict between the feudal Houses of the Vale of Arryn and the mountain clans descended from the First Men who originally settled the region has long remained unresolved due to the mountainous terrain of the area. The feudal houses are unable to defeat the clans in spite of their superior weaponry due to the clans' knowledge of the terrain, while the clans in turn are unable to defeat the feudal houses due to their inability to attack fortified castles.
- Timeline-191: In the The Great War trilogy, Major Irving Morrell leads a battalion fighting in the Canadian Rockies against Canadian forces (allied with the CSA) with the intent of cutting off railroad mountain passes in order to isolate British Columbia from the rest of Canada.
- World War Z: One segment centers around Indian engineer Sardar Khan, who's tasked with destroying mountain passes in order to cover the retreat of the Indian Government.
- The Years of Rice and Salt: One front of the Long War features not just warfare among mountains, but also warfare against a mountain, as the Muslim alliance deliberately bombards the Himalaya range enough to claim its own Karakoram peak as the highest on Earth.
Live-Action TV
- Soviet Storm: World War II in the East: "Episode 8: The Battle for the Caucasus" has Soviet infantry fighting elite German mountain troops in the mountain range of the same name. Thanks in large part to a Home Field Advantage, the Soviets are able to call in air support and use the local terrain to hold off the Germans long enough until the latter are forced into retreat following the defeat at Stalingrad.
Music
- Sabaton's "Soldier of Heaven"
is told from the perspective of a nameless World War I soldier who died in the White Friday avalanches. The soldier speaks of "taking the stairway to heaven" as he scales the slopes of "Blood Mountain" (traditionally Col di Lana, which fell to the Italians in April 1916). The soldier remains entombed where he was buried by the snow and describes watching battles of World War II waged far below, though he can tell his story to no one.
Podcasts
- The statement giver in episode 95 of The Magnus Archives is an Italian soldier who served in World War II. He was part of a unit that trained explicitly for mountain warfare against enemy infantry... that was then assigned to fighting in open plains against tanks, much to his frustration. He finally gets his chance for mountain warfare after the war has ended, much to his regret.
Toys
- In LEGO Exo-Force, the raging war between the last remnants of humanity and the robot rebellion takes place on the north and south sides of Sentai Mountain.
Video Games
- Battlefield 1: "Avanti Savoia!" takes place in the midst of the mountains of the Italian Front during World War I, with the protagonist being a part of the Royal Italian Army fighting against the Austro-Hungarian Army.
- BattleTech (2018): The mission setting effects combat in two forms, namely heat burden (how hard it is to shed heat and any Geo Effects that might affect heat) and terrain smoothness. The mission ratings warn players of the ambient atmosphere, but not the terrain generation. Mountainous maps favor more mobile 'Mechs equipped with Jump Jet Packs, such that mobile forces can achieve a Victory by Endurance against units who are too slow or limited to react, even if the latter force is much more powerful. This means that an unprepared player who brought nothing but Mighty Glacier designs such as the Awesome will be forced to slowly march single file up narrow mountain passes to reach the desired engagement area while being harried by nimbler forces such as the common Phoenix Hawk.
- Call of Duty:
- Call of Duty: "Alps Chateau" in the American campaign has Cpt. Foley, Sgt. Moody, Pvt. Martin, and other paratroopers from Baker Company tasked with rescuing two British officers in a German-held Big Fancy House located within the Bavarian Alps.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has quite a number of levels where Task Force 141 are deployed to mountainous environments, with the most notable being "Cliffhanger". In this level, Roach and Soap MacTavish must infiltrate an Ultranationalist airbase by climbing up an ice-filled cliffside, and then sneak in using a blizzard as cover.
- Civilization V: Carthaginian units have the unique ability to cross otherwise-impassable mountains — a huge tactical advantage at the cost of taking massive damage if they end their turn on one. There's an achievement for pulling a Hannibal and attacking a Roman unit with a War Elephant from a mountain.
- Crusader Kings II: Mountain terrain provides significant defensive bonuses to armies. A good technique to force a decisive battle against the (rather cowardly) AI is to place a weaker army on a mountain county with a stronger army nearby, allow the AI's army to engage the weak army and pin it in place, and then order the strong army to march to its rescue: the entire defending side will receive the terrain bonus.
- Dawn of War: While it's not a part of the gameplay, some skirmish maps have Flavor Text on the difficulties of mountain warfare. One in particular recounts an Imperial Guard regiment attacking a Tau-held peak under heavy fire, with the Tau battlesuits jetpacking away to an even harder-to-reach peak just as the Guardsmen got into weapons range.
- Elden Ring: Leyndell's assault on Volcano Manor, a castle built at the peak of the dormant volcano Mount Gelmir, has the dubious distinction of being identified as the worst battle of the entire Shattering. Between the sheer cliffs being nearly impossible to traverse, Leyndell's defensively-oriented army being forced to perform an offensive, and the general collapse of civilization, the assault has bogged down into an ongoing nightmare where Leyndell's soldiers have started going insane from despair and eating their own dead. Several save points are located at campsites they've set up while trying to ascend the volcano, but despite their efforts it seems like none of them even got within sight of Volcano Manor itself.
- Fallout 3: The Operation: Anchorage DLC places you inside a virtual simulated recreation of the Chinese invasion of Alaska. A good portion of the DLC involves making your way up treacherous pathways, picking off enemies from a distance, and disabling artillery batteries in the snowy mountains.
- Far Cry 4: Takes place in the fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat which is a very mountainous land that requires much use of a Grappling-Hook Pistol to get around.
- Isonzo: Set on the Italian Front of World War I, all of the game's maps are set in the mountains between Italy and Austria-Hungary, with the Royal Italian Army and Austro-Hungarian (and later, German) Armies fighting for control of various peaks, plateaus, and valleys in-between.
- Medal of Honor:
- Medal of Honor (1999): The fifth, sixth, and seventh levels notably take place in the mountains of Norway, Austria, and Germany, respectively, with the former two notably taking place in the dead of winter as well. Patterson himself is stated to have received extra hiking equipment just for these two missions.
- Medal of Honor: Underground: The fifth and sixth levels take place in the mountains of Italy and France, respectively. In the former, Manon Batiste is tasked with raiding the German-held monastery atop Monte Cassino to save a number of captured US airmen and destroy a number of German supply dumps. The latter, meanwhile, has Manon forced to infiltrate into a ski resort converted by the Germans into a V-1 Flying Bomb production facility. Notably, in the latter mission, Manon has to fight German mountain troops trained specifically to fight in this kind of environment.
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: The final level of Breakthrough involves Sgt. John Baker and the US 34th Infantry Division defending the Allied frontline at Monte Battaglia in Northern Italy. Thanks to the rough terrain and poor weather, Baker's unit is struggling with supply issues, which is made worse when the Germans launch a well-coordinated counteroffensive in the midst of a heavy downpour.
- Medal of Honor (2010): The story is heavily based on the events of Operation Anaconda from 2002, so the majority of the game's campaign involves fighting Taliban and Al-Qaida militants across the Takur Ghar mountain range.
- Nintendo Wars:
- Mountains are one of two terrains, the other being the HQ, which gives 4 terrain stars, the highest number that a terrain can provide. However, since it is a steep terrain, it can only be climbed by infantry and mech units, which the former having to use their entire movement to move through. Infantry-specialized COs, like Sami and Sensei, and Lash, who deals additional firepower based on terrain stars, can take advantage of the mountain terrain for offense and defense.
- "Mountain Ops," a mission exclusive to the Challenge campaign in Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, is a map filled with mountains. Both Sami and Lash, the two COs that utilize the mountains to their fullest potential, fight each other in this mission.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: The playable map on Alderaan takes place in a mountainous region during a Succession Crisis-induced Civil War (a Mêlée à Trois-cum-Proxy War between House Ulgo, who started the war with an attempted coup against House Panteer, the Republic-backed House Organa, and the Imperial-backed House Thul), which is also distracting the Alderaanian humans from their usual efforts to contain the native Killiks, Insectoid Aliens that are Explosive Breeders and have a habit of brainwashing offworlders into becoming accessories to their hives. You'll spend a lot of your time fighting up and down mountains in the class stories and sidequests.
- Squad: Has a number of mountainous maps that can be played taking place in several different mountain ranges, such as Fool's Road, set in Dagestan, Mestia in Georgia, Skorpo in Norway, and Manicouagan in Quebec. All those maps place emphasis on quick movement and skirmishing between hilltops, the difficult terrain also makes land-based supply lines particularly complicated, which means that a team losing their air-based supply vehicle can be particularly damaging to forward positions.
- Valheim: The Mountains are one of the more dangerous biomes in the game, and not just because of the vision-obscuring blizzards, Lightning Bruiser wolves, flying drakes, and occasional werewolves. The steep terrain means you spend a lot of time fighting gravity rather than enemies (expect a lot of deaths from simply falling too far or misjudging a jump), and the severe Hitbox Dissonance that occurs when you and the enemies are at different heights makes that even worse. Additionally, without a campfire, warm clothes (made with wolf fur) or frost resistance mead, the Freezing effect will gradually whittle down at your health.
Web Video
- Find Makarov: In "Operation Kingfish", Task Force 141 and Team Metal of Delta Force are deployed to a mountain hideout in Ukraine to takeout an Ultranationalist leader by the Code Name of "Kingfish". While initially successful in taking out all hostiles within the compound, it's soon revealed that the American and British Forces were Lured into a Trap, when explosives are set off within the compound, followed immediately after by the arrival of Ultranationalist reinforcements. Ultimately, both teams are forced to evacuate by Osprey tiltrotor, but not before Price volunteers to hold the enemy back.
- The Great War: The Italian Front is just one of many theaters covered by the series in detail. Among other things, the series creators have covered the everyday life and battlefield conditions in the Julian Alps, who the commanders on both the Italian and Austro-Hungarian sides were, the weapons and equipment that both sides used, and finally, the occasional weekly log on what transpired in the theater.
- Sabaton History: The "Soldier of Heaven" episode chronicles the conditions of the war on the Italian front of World War I, particularly the battles for Col di Lana, renamed Col di Sangue, "Blood Mountain", by the Italian alpini who fought there. It culminates with Italian engineers blowing the entire summit off the mountain in April 1916, so the army could advance into what remained of the Austrian positions, only for the Austrian Gebirgsjäger to simply withdraw to the next mountain over and blow up the ridge connecting them, stalling the advance once again.
- World War II: In addition to the Battle of the Caucasus on the Eastern Front, the series also covers in detail the Battle of Norway in 1940, which involved elite German mountain troops being deployed to fight against British, French, and Norwegian troops in an ultimately losing struggle.
Real Life
- Older Than Feudalism: During the Punic Wars, Hannibal Barca, leading the Carthaginian Forces against the Roman Republic, famously crossed the Alps and managed to catch the Republic's forces off guard, defeating the latter thanks to their War Elephants.
- World War I: The Italian Front was noted for being one of the most inhospitable battlefields of the entire conflict, with both Allied and Central Powers forces fighting in high-altitude mountainous environments, where falling to your death or dying in a rockslide was just as much of a problem as assaulting enemy trenches.
- World War II: Around the same time that the Battle of Stalingrad was happening, German Army Group A was tasked with fighting through the mountains of the Caucasus in order to reach the oilfields that lay beyond them. Here, elite German mountain divisions fought against determined Soviet resistance, with the Soviets ultimately successful in defending the mountain passes and forcing the Germans into retreat. Amusingly, a detachment of a German mountain regiment took time off from the fighting to ascend Mount Elbrus, the tallest peak in the Caucasus range, to plant the German flag at the 18,000-foot summit. This wasn't with any military objective or propaganda intention in mind — it was purely because it was there. They managed this without opposition and planted the flag there on the 21st of August 1942. This also absolutely infuriated two dictators. Hitler thought it was a pointless stunt and wanted to court-martial all who were involved. Stalin was equally enraged that it took his mountain troops another six months to be able to get up there and rip the German flag down so as to reclaim Elbruz for the USSR.
- The War on Terror: While Afghanistan is stereotypically associated with Desert Warfare, the country is, in fact, surrounded by several mountain ranges, with Coalition and Afghan Security Forces often having to fight Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents in various places in between these peaks.
- Several military forces have units specialized in mountain warfare, including the US Army's 10th Mountain Division, Germany's Gebirgsjäger, Italy's Alpini, France's Chasseurs Alpins and the Indian Army’s Gorkha, Kumaon and Gahrwal Regiments.
- India and Pakistan have had an ongoing "Siachen Glacier War" since the 1980s, in which far more casualties came from exposure than from enemy fire. The conflict began after India heard that Pakistan was going to send an expeditionary force to the glacier; they found out because the Pakistani Army bought cold weather gear from the same supplier in England that supplied the Indian Army. The Pakistani Army tried to occupy the glacier with their elite spec ops force the SSG, but they were unacclimated to the extreme cold and high altitude, and they begged to be extracted within days. They went to acclimate, but when they returned, the Indian Army’s Kumaon Regiment had occupied and fortified the glacier.
- The Kargil War between India and Pakistan in 1999.
- The 2020 conflict between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh region is this as well. Some reports of the fatalities incurred during the border skirmishes involve troops falling off of mountain cliffs, and Chinese reinforcements sent to the region have reportedly suffered low oxygen poisoning and had to be hastily evacuated due to poor acclimatization to the extreme altitude.
- During the Spanish American Wars of Independence, both José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar led armies across the Andes to liberate Chile and New Granada (Colombia), respectively. The Spanish were caught flatfooted both times because the task was deemed impossible, let alone repeatable.
- The Nepali Civil War that raged for a decade from 1996-2006 between the royal monarchy and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) insurgent forces. The government had a hard time keeping up with the insurgents thanks to Nepal's extreme mountainous terrain and lacked a numerous force of helicopters to track them down, and eventually the war ended with the overthrow of the monarchy and nationalization of all royal assets, and the communists becoming integrated into the new government.
