On Friday afternoon, July 10, a climber was killed after slipping and fallling over 500 feet while descending 14,130-foot Capitol Peak in central Colorado. The climber, 47-year-old Jimi Raymond Flowers, the U.S. Paralympic swim coach from Colorado Springs, had successfully summited the mountain, the hardest and most rugged of Colorado’s 55 Fourteeners or mountains above 14,000 feet high.

While descending rocky terrain at about 13,000 feet on an exposed ridge between K2, a spur point northeast of Capitol Peak, and 13,300-foot Mount Daly, Flowers apparently slipped on a snow patch. Doug Ingram, his climbing partner and USOC director of international games, watched him slide downward at a high speed, bumping over cliff bands and snow-filled couloirs before stopping at 12,500 feet among boulders. Adam Crider with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s office said, “He literally slipped and fell and couldn’t catch himself. Most climbing accidents occur during descent because climbers are fatigued and have a relaxed mindset.”

Doug Ingram called his wife on a cell phone at 2:45 p.m. from the mountain and she alerted Mountain Rescue Aspen. The rescue team was ferried by a Flight for Life helicopter and dropped off one at a time on a flat area a mile-and-a-half from the accident site. A paramedic reached Flowers at 6:25 p.m. and began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) even though Mr. Flowers was not breathing and had no pulse. Shortly afterward CPR ceased, he was prounounced dead, and the operation became a recovery effort. The partner was flown out by helicopter, while three rescuers bivouacked near the body.

On Saturday, July 11, at 6 a.m., Mr. Flower’s body was evacuated by a cable attached to a hovering helicopter. He was transported to a landing sport where he was put into the helicopter and taken to Aspen Valley Hospital.

The death of Jimi Flowers, survived by his wife Sue and two young children, hits hard at the United States Olympic Committee and the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. USOC acting CEO Stephanie Streeter said today, “Jimi was an incredible coach who developed numerous Olympic and Paralympic champions. He was passionate about swimming, dedicated to helping others and was such an inspiration to athletes, colleagues, and all who knew him.”

Melissa Stockwell, a U.S. Paralympic swimmer who lost a leg in a roadside bombing in Iraq, told The Denver Post, “He's one of the greatest men I've ever known. He had a way of believing in people. My husband said he was a walking exclamation point. You couldn't be around him and not laugh or smile.”

Capitol Peak is often considered Colorado’s toughest Fourteener. It stands alone on the northwest edge of the Elk Range west of Aspen. The mountain is tough even by its easiest route with lots of scrambling on rocky terrain and the famous 100-foot-long Knife Edge Ridge, an exposed bit of Class 4 climbing that sometimes requires a rope and steel nerves.

I haven’t been able to find out what equipment Mr. Flowers was carrying but it appears from the accident reports that he wasn’t using an ice axe, which he could have used to arrest his fall. After a heavy snow season, conditions in the Colorado Rockies are still spring-like. Lots of the high peaks are plastered with snow and ice so it would be smart to carry an ice axe and crampons to avoid this situation. I’ll keep an ear to the rock and see if I can find out any other details about the accident.

Photograph above: Morning light washes across the Knife Edge on Capitol Peak. Photograph © Stewart M. Green

John Bachar, killed last Sunday after a fall while climbing solo on Dike Wall near his home in Mammoth Lakes, California, was without a doubt one of the most influential rock climbers of the last 40 years. “He was an artist,” says his friend and photographer Dean Fidelman. “He transcended the sport.”

The extent of John’s reputation as a climber is evidenced by news of his death and subsequent obituaries appearing in many major American newspapers as well as media and newspapers around the world. Three of the best obituaries appeared in The New York Times, parent company of About.com, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian in London.

This trio of articles about John Bachar, unlike so many articles in the mainstream media, get the facts right about John and the dicey sort of climbing that he did. After reading them, please post comments about John Bachar—his climbing, his life, and how he influenced you—below in the comments section.

Read John Bachar’s obituaries:
New York Times: John Bachar, Rock Climber, Dies at 51; Daredevil with Uncompromising Style
Los Angeles Times: John Bachar Dies at 52; Rock Climber Specialized in Free-Solo Ventures
The Guardian: John Bachar

Photograph: John Bachar atop a Joshua Tree cliff after another free-solo climb. Photograph courtesy Karl Baba/PeakLightImages.com (Thanks Karl for the use of your great images of John!)

Sunday’s death of John Bachar is playing out in a very public forum, particularly on the SuperTopo website in California. So many of John’s friends and admirers have written posts in shock and disbelief that one of America’s climbing legends, a man who climbed with control, strength, and purity, could fall and die.

The one thread on SuperTopo, however, that is most poignant and moving was started by John Bachar’s young son Tyrus. On Sunday night at 11:22 p.m., Tyrus reached out to his father’s many friends, writing: “Dude I'm soo sad right now my dad is dead he fell of of the dike wall. I knew it was a bad idea to go soloing today. I knew it. JB 09 I LOVE YOU DAD.....” Reading that tears you apart.

Through the rest of the night, Tyrus posted several other notes. At 12:36 a.m. on July 6 he wrote, “I appreciate all of the kind words and offers to help me. If I need help I know who to call.” Four minutes later he wrote, “i miss him :(”

Many of John’s close friends and climbing partners wrote to Tyrus, offering solace and understanding to a boy who just lost his father, a boy who couldn’t sleep.

The next morning John Long wrote a long letter saying: “The last time I talked to your dad, several months ago, we were just finishing the text for the new Stonemaster book. As you probably know, your dad much preferred to climb than to write about it. But I had to have a story written by THE Stonemaster himself (your dad), or the book wouldn´t fly…. I never imagined that this book would be a testimonial for your father, for his courage, vision and uncompromising approach to life. Of course, your dad is featured on the cover - who else belongs there? Nobody but your dad, that´s who.

”Anyway, that story does say in plain and simple terms, what your dad´s climbing was about. But it doesn´t say what He was about. Tyrus, he was about you. Any friend that talked to John had to be prepared for the conversation to end up about you, because that´s where it was going to go. Never mind some stupid book or story—John Bachar´s life never made real sense till you were born. Any friend can tell you as much."

Yesterday afternoon Kurt Smith also wrote a moving tribute to John Bacher: “Tyrus, be proud of your father and all who he touched. Be proud of your father to sticking to his guns and never taking the easy way out. Be proud of your father for all that he did to progress the sport that we all love so much. Be proud of your father for showing you so many wonderful adventures. Every time I saw him he would light up like a roman candle when he would talk about you. He loved you and was proud to have you in his life. His life was never easy and not always fun but he stood his ground and never compromised his dreams, his vision and I will always hold him in the highest regard. He did more to influence me than anyone in my life and I owe him for showing me the way and letting me try to follow in his footsteps. he was greater than a great man, he was and will always be my hero, my idol, my friend.”

The loss of John weighs heavy on all of us climbers. He was a great climber. He redefined the game. He was a friend and inspiration to so many climbers. But his loss is most acute for his family, particularly for his son Tyrus. Our hopes and prayers and best wishes are with him now and in the future.

Photographs: Top: An iconic image of John Bachar soloing “On the Lamb” at Tuolumne Meadows that was used on a Boreal poster. Bottom: John Bachar relaxing on Joshua Tree granite. Photographs courtesy John Bachar Collection and Karl Baba

What do you think about John Bachar's death? Do you have any stories about John? I welcome your comments below.

Jimmy Dunn called me this morning at 6:30 and gave me the bad news that John Bachar was killed after he fell from an 80-foot route while free-soloing on California granite yesterday. The 51-year-old Bachar was found unresponsive on July 5 at the base of Dike Wall, one of his favorite climbing areas near his home in Mammoth Lakes, California. He was climbing alone and without a rope at the time. Paramedics transported him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. John, the owner and designer of Acopa Shoes, leaves behind a son Tyrus.

John Bachar was simply the greatest and best climber of my generation. John redefined the limits of the possible with his audacious climbs, both with and without a rope, and his uncompromising ethics.

John’s climbing achievements are many. He put up the first 5.12 route in Yosemite Valley and in 1978 worked on the the iconic Midnight Lightning boulder problem in Camp 4 with Ron Kauk, who claimed the first ascent. With Peter Croft in 1986, he linked The Nose of El Capitan and the Northwest Face of Half Dome in 14 hours. In 1981 Bachar established with Dave Yerian the landmark route Bachar-Yerian (5.11c), a 500-foot free climb in Tuolumne Meadows that was bolted on the lead with a mere 13 bolts. John Bachar was an outspoken critic of rappel-bolted routes, which became popular in the 1980s, feeling that they took a lot of the adventure out of climbing.

John Bachar was well known for his many solo climbs over the years. In Yosemite he soloed New Dimensions, The Nabisco Wall, and The Moratorium, all 5.11s, in the 1980s. He also regularly soloed lots of routes at Joshua Tree, linking as many as 100 in a day.

Since John’s death yesterday many climbers and friends have posted comments and thoughts on the SuperTopo forum. John Long, a long-time friend and himself a great climber, wrote: “I remember driving all the way out to Fort Collins in the early 1970s to meet JB and go on a grand bouldering tour and try and pick off as many Gill problems as we could…. Bachar could basically climb anything back then, and his free soloing was off the charts. He was the best, and anyone who saw him on the sharp end knew they were watching something rare, a real trad master.”

Pat Ament noted: “John was my beloved friend. He was the next generation, and its star. He treated me respectfully and as a friend. We had bouldered already for years and done climbs, when in 1975 we climbed New Dimensions together. In his presence I simply climbed better. He honestly told me he had never seen anyone climb that final crux pitch so easily. But then I had a rope, and he had soloed it, which was a bit beyond my imagination.”

These days I only saw John at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, where I would stop by the Acopa booth and talk to him about climbing and rock shoes and the latest news. He was always accommodating and friendly, sometimes giving a new pair of shoes to try out. I looked forward to seeing him at the next show in a couple weeks. John, you’re going to be missed.

Photographs: The great John Bachar at Joshua Tree National Park in 2006. Photographs courtesy Karl Baba

Should climbing be a sport in the Olympic Games? It’s a question that’s been debated for twenty years now since the first climbing World Cup in 1989. Competition climbing, no longer an infant sport, has made long strides toward legitimacy.

Later this month the city of Kaosiung, Taiwan will host the World Games, an athletic competition under the supervision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for all the fringe and niche sports that yearn to be included in the Olympic Games. Over 35 sports are included in this year’s sporting purgatory including such arcane pursuits as korfball, flying disc, orienteering, tug-of-war, and competition climbing.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing is pushing for climbing’s inclusion in the 2020 Olympic Games at a still undecided city. Will it get the nod? Hard to know. Squash will probably get a go-ahead for the 2016 games so climbing wouldn’t be included unless it was simply an exhibition. The IOC likes some of the alternative X-Games sports like snowboarding, which proved immensely popular at the Olympics, but climbing kind of flopped at the X-Games.

I worked for several years at the X-Games for Jim Waugh, the climbing organizer, and it was a constant battle for him to keep climbing in the mix. First lead climbing was dropped. The venue was too expensive and frankly the slow and steady pace didn’t make for great television. As more than one wag said, “It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry!”

Bouldering was adopted in San Francisco. It was exciting with hard problems and big plunges off the plywood boulders but it too was dropped like a screaming leader fall. Which left only speed climbing. Okay, speed climbing looks good on television. It’s also simple—just two climbers racing each other up a 100-foot wall. But the venue was just too expensive for the few minutes of air time it received so it finally got the boot too.

When I was a board member of the American Sport Climbing Federation (ASCF) in the 1990s, part of our mission was to work toward climbing’s inclusion in the highest competition, the Olympic Games. USA Climbing, now the governing body for competition climbing in the United States, holds the same goal, saying on their website, “The Olympic Games! They are within reach of USA Climbing. Just like the finish hold on a route, this is our sport’s ultimate goal.” A lofty aim, but probably not within reach in the foreseeable future, especially since USA Climbing only qualified two Americans, both women, for the World Games and no big names like Chris Sharma.

Climbing has always been participatory recreation rather than an overtly competitive sport so it remains to be seen how much interest climbers and more importantly, climbing companies with money like North Face or Patagonia would have to support competition climbing. In the 1990s competition climbing in the United States was dirt poor. There were few major sponsors for events. It’s hardly changed in the past decade.

If a flood of money did come into competition climbing, the big question is how would it be spent? Looking at the finances of other small sports, most of it would be spent on only a few athletes, coaches, as well as the administrators.

Richard Hunkler at Slippery Rock University wrote an article Seven Deadly Sins Leaders of Sports Federations Should Avoid! that was published in waterpoloplanet.com. His second sin is Lust, which he defines as “the disproportionate craving for the pleasure of satisfying one goal.” Hunkler says if a federation has a goal, it should be “then make it something that will truly benefit the entire membership day in and day out – say, a goal such as spending 100% of our time, money, and energy in trying to have as many youth in this country playing water polo as there are playing soccer.”

So lots of interesting questions about competition climbing and the Olympics. What is your opinion? Go to the Climbing Forum and let me know your thoughts. In the meantime, good luck to Mykael Ann McGinley and Tiffany Hensley, the two American climbers in this year’s World Games.

Photograph top: Are medal stands the future of climbing? Tori Allen after winning gold at the 2002 women’s speed climbing event at the X-Games. Photograph © Stewart M Green

This last May 23, 67-year-old Californian Bill Burke became the oldest American to reach the lofty summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain and one of the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks. Burke made it up on his third attempt on the peak. His first attempt in 2007 ended a mere 300 feet from the summit when he turned around, afraid he wouldn’t have the strength to climb down if he continued.

The day after reaching the summit, he called his wife Sharon and told her about a horrendous storm on Everest. “I’ve never been in a storm like that in the mountains,” he said. “Snow, freezing, freezing cold, high winds, it was quite a wild ride. It was really difficult, a very hard mountain. There is nothing about it that is easy. But, thank God, we made it and we made it back safely.”

What’s ironic about Burke’s ascent is that on May 21, two days before Burke reached the summit, 66-year-old Dawes Eddy, a Spokane, Washington senior citizen, summitted the big boy and held the honor of oldest American to stand on the roof of the world for a scant 48 hours. Tough break for Dawes.

Another Spokane senior, 60-year-old Kay LeClaire, became the second oldest American woman to reach Everest’s summit when she topped out on May 22. The ascent, coming on LeClaire’s fourth attempt in five years, was also the last of her Seven Summits.

These three senior Americans were among the 300-plus people that climbed Mount Everest this spring. Unofficially there were five deaths on the mountain.

Good for these three oldsters. Instead of sitting around playing cards, hanging at the shuffleboard court, or taking a brisk walk around the local mall, they're getting out there and breathing thin air and suffering and having a great time redefining old age in the mountains.

Photograph top: Bill Burke and Mingma Sherpa atop Everest on May 23. Photograph courtesy Bill Burke.

View the big fall off Gaia

Sometimes you got to fall before you learn how to fly, or is it learn how to climb? Anyway, if you’re a climber and you’re trying to do a hard route, then you’re going to log some serious air time. It’s the nature of working a project. It’s one thing, however, to catapult off a bolted sport route at Rifle Mountain Park in Colorado and another to plunge off a sparsely gear-protected traditional route on a gritstone edge in England.

Check out this wild whipper that French climber Jean-Minh Trin-Thieu took on the grit testpiece Gaia (E8 7a UK or 5.12c US), a wild route put up in 1986 by the great British climber Johnny Dawes.  The route has been climbed, and fallen on, by lots of climbers including American Lisa Rands, but in 2008 young American climber Alex Honnold impressively flashed the route, that is he climbed it on his first try without falling. Alex noted after the ascent, “Not a true onsight since I’ve seen movies, but there was no chalk.”

This fall is from the late nineties climbing cult classic video Hard Grit about the toughest and wildest and most dangerous gritstone routes.

Buy Hard Grit

In May the speedy Swiss climber Ueli Steck free-climbed Golden Gate (5.13b), a 41-pitch route up the west wall of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

Ueli on-sighted or climbed the route for the first time and fell on only one pitch. Steck, 32 years old, did the route in four days on his honeymoon. His wife Nicole belayed him. Steck onsighted without falls three 5.13 pitches and five 5.12 pitches, but fell on a relatively easy 5.11 crack above El Cap Spire when he slipped on wet rock.

This impressive feat was done in impeccable style. Steck climbed from the ground up, didn’t rehearse any of the hard pitches or check out the sequences before climbing them. He also hauled a heavy pack after every pitch while Nicole ascended the rope.

Ueli Steck, while relatively unknown in the United States, is a very strong European rock climber and alpinist. He’s free-climbed routes as hard as 5.14a and free-solos, that is climbs without a rope, routes as difficult as 5.13b. He’s also an amazing alpinists who has set solo speed records in the Alps, including on the legendary North Faces of The Eiger, Grandes Jorasses, and Matterhorn. He climbed the Grandes Jorasses in 2 hours and 20 minutes; the Eigerwand in 2 hours and 47 minutes; and the Matterhorn in 1 hour and 56 minutes. Simply unbelievable times.

Photographs above: Ueli Steck on El Cap’s summit after his ascent. Photograph courtesy Nicole Steck/www.uelisteck.ch

Everest News reports that South Korean alpinists Go Mi-sun and Kim Jae-soo became the first climbers to ever get an 8,000-meter-peak hat trick by summitting three of the big boys in a single season. Quite an achievement since it’s pretty tough for even the best mountaineers to score one in a season, especially given the vargaries of weather and danger.

The pair first climbed Makalu, reaching the summit on April 30, bagged Kangchenguna’s summit on May 19, then raced up Dhaulagiri. They stood atop it in the late afternoon of June 9. Everest News reports that Go Mi-sun, also a superb rock climber (I photographed her at the X-Games one summer), said in an email: “Dhaulagiri was the toughest of all my ten eight-thousand-meter climbs. We climbed for 25 hours non-stop from camp III to summit and back due to tough weather conditions with ice shower constantly hitting our faces.”

While Kim Jae-soo has climbed 11 of the world’s highest mountains, Go Mi-sun has knocked off her ten summits in a mere two-and-half years. This puts her in the top five women in the world vying to become the first female alpinist to reach the summits of all 14 8,000-meter peaks. Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbruner and Italian Nives Morei each have climbed 12 of the peaks.

The dark horse Kim Mi-sun appears, however, to have the inside edge on the other women. Right now she is en route to Pakistan and on to the lofty Karakoram range where she plans to nab Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, and Nanga Parbet this summer, leaving only Annapurna on her list…which she plans to climb later this year if she’s fortunate enough to bag the Karakoram three.

I wish her luck and safe climbing on this dangerous climbing endeavor, as well as a safe and speedy passage through the war zone in Pakistan.

Photograph above: Go Mi-sun is on track to finish the 8,000-meter peaks by the end of 2009. Photograph courtesy Benrasse/Montagne

After all the bad news out of China in the past couple weeks, here is a bit of good news from the top of the world.

Last Wednesday, June 10, Apa Sherpa reached the summit of Mount Everest, highest mountain in the world, for his 19th time—more than anyone else in the world. The 49-year-old Sherpa, originally from the village of Thame in Nepal and a resident of Salt Lake City since 2006, has climbed Everest for eight straight years and 19 of the last 20 years.

Apa also carried a sacred two-pound vase, called a Bhumpa, to the summit. The high monk Ngawang Tenzin Zangpo, Rinpoche of the monastery of Tengboche below the mountain, asked Apa to take the Bhumpa, which was filled with 400 different ingredients, relics, plants, and elements, to the summit as an offering to Chomolangma, Mother Goddess of the World, to protect humanity and help deal with climate change.

When he reached Mount Everest's summit, Apa radioed Eco Everest Expedition Base Camp at 8:00 p.m. and said, "I am at the top and am looking at all the prayer flags. I have just satisfied the deities and placed the Bhumpa on the summit." He also raised a flag that read: "Stop Climate Change, Let the Himalayas Live!"

Photograph above: Apa Sherpa has climbed Mount Everest more times than any other person. Photograph courtesy Apa Sherpa