I am writing you today to share sad news about Mike Donahue's passing. On
November 16, 2005, Mike moved from life to death. Some, including Mike himself,
might say he summited his personal mountain and was called back to base camp on
the other side.
Family surrounded Mike when he died peacefully and easily. Mike touched all of
us profoundly and I can easily say that we all have deep, heartfelt sorrow for
his family and their loss. He took his last breath while those who loved him
surrounded his bedside.
Mike's expedition with brain cancer has been long and challenging. He was a
model of grace and dignity through it all, as was his family. A memorial
service to honor this brave, compassionate, and loveable man will be held on
December 4th, 2:30 PM at the Aspen Lodge. (Lodging accomodation can be made by
calling 970.586.8133)
It saddens me to write with such difficult news, but I write knowing that Mike
will continue to live on in all of our hearts. He, more than anyone, gave
himself to everyone he met. For those of you that have climbed with Mike, you
may remember that he used to call the last stretch to the summit "closing in on
it." That is what he did himself yesterday at 12:25 pm. His life, his mountain,
was remarkable in every way. He will be greatly missed.
In sorrow and in love,
Michelle Chase
And the Colorado Mountain School family
obituary:
A man of the mountains in the finest sense, Mike Donahue of Allenspark,
Colorado, mountaineer and guide, author, artist, environmentalist, educator and
home-spun philosopher, died at his home surrounded by his family and friends on
November 16th after battling for nearly 18 months one of the most aggressive and
lethal forms of brain cancer (Glioblastoma multiforme).
Born into the third generation of mountaineers and mountain lovers, Mike
acquired a near religious passion for the mountains along with a mystical sense
that many of the world’s troubles would be alleviated if only its people would
wander and climb in his beloved mountains. Experiencing intimately the
mountains, he thought, would bring about a kind of spiritual transformation and
cultivate skills that are of great value in all areas of life. In the 1920s, his
maternal grandfather acted as a summer foreman of a group of students who built
trails in Rocky Mountain National Park. Later Mike’s father helped maintain
these trails as did Mike and two of his children. During these summers, his
grandfather, mother, uncle and two aunts hiked and climbed among the Park’s
great peaks. In 1927 his mother, at all of six years of age, climbed Longs Peak,
Colorado’s most magnificent mountain, for the first time and in 1997 climbed it
for her last time. This was Mike’s world as a child.
At an early age, he aspired to be a mountaineering guide and, in his late teens,
gained employment with a Longs Peak guiding service that succeeded a long line
of well known guiding companies, including Enos Mills’ Longs Peak Inn. In 1902,
Mills, a protégé of John Muir and later to become the “father of Rocky Mountain
National Park”, bought the original guide service from his Uncle Carlyle Lamb.
In the spirit of Muir, Mills sought to make climbing a total “nature”
experience, an idea that greatly influenced Mike. When Michael Covington’s
Fantasy Ridge took over this guiding concession, Mike became a Fantasy Ridge
guide. In 1981, Covington sold the business to Mike and his wife Peggy. Although
first and foremost a technical mountaineering guide service, Mike sensed the
opportunity to restructure it in the spirit of Enos Mills’ “nature guiding.”
Beyond “bagging peaks” and doing hard routes, he wanted his mountaineering
clients to gain appreciation of the mountain environment, its flora and fauna
and its ecology. For that reason, he and Peggy chose the term “mountain school”
as opposed to “mountaineering school” for the name of their new guide service.
Despite these inclinations, Mike built his “Colorado Mountain School” into one
of America’s elite technical mountaineering guide services. In addition to
guiding climbs in RMNP and all over Colorado and neighboring states, CMS ran
expeditions to Alaska, Mexico, South America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Business
successes notwithstanding, Mike found managing a business to be a burden. His
heart dwelled in the mountains and in climbing, guiding and enabling others to
experience the “gems”, as he put it, and be transformed. He hoped his clients,
after climbing with his school, would return home better able to deal with other
problems they would face. Mike obtained great satisfaction helping the
handicapped do things in the mountains that they could hardly dream of. In
remarkable efforts, he enabled a paraplegic to climb Longs Peak via the North
Face and blind persons to do difficult, technical rock climbs.
Mike was a humble man with little desire to make a name for himself as a
mountaineer. Of much greater interest to him was sharing his mountain world and
observing his friends and clients in their efforts to deal with the problems
they faced, whether in scary climbing situations or elsewhere. He often claimed
that in everyone’s mind there are a little negative guy, who advances a thousand
reasons why one ought to quit and go home, and a little positive guy, who says,
“You can do it!” In this intense competition, he suggested, our job is to
support our positive guy. To do this, he urged that we “get into the climb,”
which meant that one ought to focus on the now and its immediate challenges and
joys, not on some distant goal, such as a summit. He had a remarkable talent to
meet people in the moment. His confidence in others’ ability to meet the
challenge and his quiet encouragement helped people achieve things they never
thought possible.
Mike was an innovative man, with a constant stream of new ideas about doing
things differently. During his guiding career, Mike met the director of “The
School for Innovators”. Its underlying idea is that people tend to be either
adapters or innovators, that neither understands the other and that both need
the other to succeed. The challenge is to help these fundamentally different
types to accept their own limitations and to appreciate and value what the other
type has to offer. For an innovative person like Mike, this was a “natural”, and
The School for Innovators and the Colorado Mountain School formed a business
relationship that gave Mike great satisfaction and an outlet for his creative
energies. Mike created “climbing” challenges that pushed his students’
risk-taking boundaries, a situation that helped them learn to build teams and
solve problems as a team.
In 1999, after eighteen years of directing the Colorado Mountain School, Mike
and Peggy decided to sell the CMS to John Bicknell and his wife Patty, the
current owners of CMS.
In 1970, Mike married Oklahoman Peggy Cremin and taught her about his mountain
world. Adjusting to her new surroundings and neighborly mountain critters, Peggy
became an excellent climber in her own right, accompanying Mike on many climbs
around the world, including adventures on McKinley, Kilimanjaro, Chimborazo,
Aconcagua and the Mexican volcanoes.
Mike was a creative man. He wrote the successful Longs Peak Experience & Trail
Guide (1992) for those who dream of attempting Longs Peak without a guide and
three children’s books: Zelf: The Christmas Elf (1994), about Santa’s dream of
giving every boy and girl a Christmas gift, The Grandpa Tree (1991), a
well-reviewed allegory about the cycle of life that will have special
significance for his grandchildren, and most recently The Fire That Saved The
Forest (2002), about the benefits of forest fire.
When he discovered he was ill, Mike was working on Miguel’s Shovel, a book about
our obligations to the environment, and The Old Guide's Last Climb, a
compilation of life's lessons, both of which he was unable to complete. His
family members are looking for editors and publishers for these two important
fiction works. Mike was also an accomplished photographer and artist, working
with paint and clay. He studied at Palomar Jr. College in Southern California
and the Universities of Arkansas and Northern Colorado.
Mike was a courageous man, who, during his long struggle with cancer,
exemplified the principles of life he had long taught. Even after major surgery
and intense conventional treatment, he continued to climb in his mountains,
finding them to be a source of strength and hope. While climbing one day about
four months after his first surgery, he explained that he was taking the biggest
steps possible (a poor climbing technique), because, with each big step, he was
becoming stronger. He never complained about his situation. Toward the end, as
his cancer left him weaker and weaker, he accepted the fact that there were many
“positive guys” in his life, including family members, neighbors, friends and
former guides, who sought to return some of the encouragement and support they
had received from him, and upon whom he relied with deep appreciation.
Mike is survived by his wife Peggy; his three children Topher and wife, Vera,
Nemonie Colville and husband, Dave, and Tobias; his parents Warren and Helen
Donahue; his brothers Pat, Brian, Tobin and Kerry; and his two grandchildren
Syana and Aven.
A memorial service is planned at the Aspen Lodge (Rt. 7, South of Estes Park) on
Sunday, December 4, 2005, at 2:30 p.m. (Lodging accommodations can be made by
calling 970/586-8133.)
Memorial contributions can be sent to Mike's Brain Expedition Fund, c/o Colorado
Mountain School, 341 Moraine Ave., Estes Park, CO 80510.
