This study deals with the phenomenon of metaphorical framing, its effects on reasoning, and its connections with the phenomenon of metaphor resistance, all by looking at the example of WAR metaphors in mountaineering discourse. Metaphors provide an interpretative frame which may influence the way people view an activity. For instance, framing mountaineering as WAR may result in mountaineering being seen as more dangerous. To test the potential framing effects of WAR metaphors on mountaineering, two studies were performed. The first one is a survey study which confirms that mountaineers oppose (resist) the usage of such metaphors. In contrast, it was found in a psycholinguistic experiment that framing a fictional mountain climb as WAR results in very limited effects on reasoning on participants. The discussion focuses on why psycholinguistic experiments are less likely to confirm framing effects of metaphors as opposed to discourse-based studies and bridges the gap between the limited results of the psycholinguistic experiment and the great significance WAR metaphors were given by the mountaineering community in the survey study. To achieve that, three main elements are discussed: methodological differences between psycholinguistic experiments and discourse-based studies, limits of metaphorical inference, and metaphor resistance as an index of social identity.