We've had the reactivated 10th Mountain Division for around two decades, but I doubt they are trained up to the same standards of the World War II outfit. Still, I have to wonder whether their mountain-climbing training was really put into practice very frequently in Italy during '44-'45 -- did they really have to go up and down on ropes on cliffs as a matter of course?

This special training thing might be a bit like the Airborne philosophy -- it's not as much about the efficacy of large-scale parachute drops in combat today or rock-climbing, it's about the motivation level of the guys who volunteer for that kind of thing in the first place, and the "Never Quit" attitude they have.