Chad Kellogg died.
I saw it on Facebook, posted by two
people I know from Seattle. I didn’t
know Chad, but I had met him before a slideshow meant to raise funds for his
2013 Everest speed climb. I was visiting
Seattle, deep in preparations for a climb of Mt. Huntington, knowing I was not
quite eating at the grownup alpinist table but not sitting with the little
kids, either. It was one of those
weekends in a city I called home for 3 years and darted in and out of for
another 3 when I realized I could not possibly revisit everything and everyone
I loved in the span of two days, so had to cut it down to the basics. I showed up early for the show, talked to
Chad about who we knew, drank a glass of wine and ate some of the tasty
appetizers, saw some other climbing friends, and left to hang out and do some
planning with my Alaska climbing
partner.
This was the extent of my time
knowing Chad, but I knew his accomplishments.
I knew that he had come up as a fast climber on Rainier and other
Northwest routes. He had worked for one
of the same guiding companies I still work for when not caught up in the oil
patch. He started as a young ranger and
guide, and kept pushing himself, kept setting speed records, until he was operating
at a higher level during the time in life when many people back off and focus
on careers or have families. He found a
woman who was also a driven, intelligent, strong climber and athlete and
married her. She died in Alaska while rappelling
a route. He kept climbing.
This post is actually about how I
and others learned of Chad’s death. I
was sitting at work, watching the Directional Driller make a slide that would
allow us to rotate (drill) at a whopping 30 feet an hour, when I saw the post
on the page of the Seattle climber. Facebook
is, sadly, at present a big part of my social life. I am out here, sitting in the belly of the
beast of industry most days, learning to steer the front of the machine that
makes holes in the ground. I briefly pop
up in Alaska, walking down the street still defensive and sarcastic from life
among rig workers, way too happy to be free and made strong enough by weight training and
from spending all my days off sleeping in the lonely camper shell of my Tacoma
at the base of various ice waterfalls and parking lots of rock areas. I have
my feet in different worlds, and feel like the weird sister in both of
them. This outsider’s perspective,
however, allows me to make some observations that some people miss, or are
afraid to say when they seek acceptance and validation from only one social
group.
Don’t post someone’s death on
Facebook before a family member does or a press release is issued. Just because you know someone from a place
you climbed or camped, met someone at a slideshow or after party, or in some other
way peripherally interacted with him/her does NOT give you the right to
announce the end of his/her life. A
relative of Chad’s said as much on a comment thread under a picture somebody
posted: please don’t post for a few days.
Let the family be notified. When
someone dies in a foreign country, social media allows this knowledge to travel
faster to those who are connected to it.
These people are not always the people who are closest to the person who
died. Chad Kellogg had gained fame with
his bold and fast ascents. Part of fame
is a shift from being a private individual to being a public figure. People who have not taken climbing to the
level Chad did often feel some sense of ownership and belonging by posting
announcements and achievements related to this person. The public figure’s story becomes owned by the
public.
Death is the end of this
story. The last year of my life was
heavy with death, up, close, personal. I
see my closest climbing friends backing off from climbing by choice this year for
their young families. I am wrestling
with that same question now, and the answer is pointing in the opposite
direction despite all my fears that this means being alone forever. Climbing makes me who I am, and I have played
in the big arena just enough to know that at the core of the public figure well
known climbers become is the private core of who they really are. Extending out from that is a constellation of
people whose lives are inextricably tied to that core person. Death takes it
back to that. You know in your heart, as
you hear the sad news and want to write that post because you are in the know,
because you want to inform the community, that giving those core people closest
to the deceased climber the space and privacy to grieve until there is an
official announcement is the respectful way.
It is kind. Death is
permanent. There is time.
