Mt Rainier Death June 2023 - Dawes Eddy

[olyclimber]

Just came across this from June this year:

https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/news/climber-fatality-and-recovery-on-mount-rainier-6-6-23.htm

What stood out to me was the soloist was 80 years old!   I think the record for oldest person to summit is 82?

This guy had previously had the record for the oldest person to summit Rainier, and had previously summited Everest solo.

https://people.com/body-washington-man-found-went-missing-climbing-mount-rainier-celebrate-birthday-7509313

Did any of you know him? Dawe Eddy was his name.

 

   This year a woman set the record for the oldest woman at 78.

https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/rose-vanderhoof-78-becomes-oldest-woman-to-summit-mt-rainier

[Bronco]

Didn't know him but I understand he was also the oldest person to summit Everest at the time he climbed it and was attempting his 80th summit of Rainier in June.  

[dougd]

I did not know Dawes personally but had the pleasure of meeting him while on a fund raiser bike ride for Cystic Fibrosis a year or so after he summited Everest. Spotted him at a rest stop waiting outside the women's bathroom and as I awaited my wife who was in the long line at same, I introduced myself. We talked about climbing, and getting older and this was just a genuine, humble, kind soul. Climbing big mountains can have that effect of a person.

He was also a neighbor who lived at the bottom of the long steep hill my wife and I live on and we would often see him running it, and right up to the end he trained on that hill. Saw him doing just that, grinding away, right before his last climb.

Plenty of folks around the Spokane climbing community knew him. Chris Kopczynski wrote about climbing with Dawes in his book https://www.amazon.com/Highest-Hardest-Mountain-Climbers-Lifetime/dp/1493066471, John Roskelley &c..

RIP Dawes

d