Wyoming guide, whose father died on the Grand Teton, presumed dead on Nepali peak

Talented Wyoming guide Michael Gardner who cultivated his world-class mountain climbing skills in the Tetons is missing on a Himalayan peak and presumed dead. Gardner’s father, also a legendary climber, died in a fall from the Grand Teton in 2008.

Gardner fell while attempting a climb of Jannu East, a 24,501-foot high peak in eastern Nepal earlier this week, according to alpine news sites, friends and employers. A French team retreating from the north face of the unclimbed peak saw Gardner’s partner, Sam Hennessey, alone on the face and waving on Monday, Explorersweb and AlpineMag reported.

Hennessey told the French climbers that Gardner had fallen, the news outlets reported. The three Frenchmen and Hennessey then rappelled 2,300 feet to the bottom of the face together where they found pieces of clothing but no sign of Gardner.

Gardner, 32, lost his father, a guide with Exum Mountain Guides, in an accident on the Grand Teton in 2008. George Gardner of Ridgway, Colorado, was 58 when he set off to climb the Lower Exum Ridge alone without a rope.

Searchers found his body the next day. The cause of his fatal fall remains unknown.

Michael Gardner was 16 at the time, but his father’s death didn’t deter him from climbing and skiing in the mountains and he, too, became an Exum mountain guide. “His guiding apprenticeship began informally, with his first mountaineering trips at age eight, with his father and saw him become one of the youngest guides in the United States,” his biography at the Exum Mountain Guides site states.

His talent, however, ranged beyond a record of outstanding alpine achievements in North America, Antarctica and the Himalayas. He had a knack for relating to clients, friends said, an ability that stood him well on 150 ascents of the 13,775-foot-high Grand Teton.

“He was smiling, no matter how much he had going on,” said Dan Corn, a fellow Teton guide. “He just had an ability to connect with people on their level [that] I don’t think a lot of folks have.”

Lives changed instantly

News of Michael Gardner’s fall shook the Teton alpine community.

“Our lives changed instantly,” said Renny Jackson, a former Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger and Exum guide who climbed several routes with Gardner. He, Gardner and Jackson’s daughter Jane had shared ropes on Triple Direct on Yosemite’s El Capitan and on the North Ridge of the Grand Teton.

Jane Jackson left for Kathmandu, Nepal, this week with Gardner’s girlfriend, Elena Hight, an Olympic snowboarder, to deal with the loss, Renny Jackson said Thursday. Plans for a search or other efforts in the remote Kanchenjunga region of eastern Nepal are developing, he said.

Hight told of the couple’s too-short love Wednesday in an Instagram post addressed to Michael but visible to the world. Theirs was, she said, “[a] kind of love that felt so true and real and other worldly I often asked with complete sincerity, where did you come from?”

“All the joyful memories we made will keep me going for now,” she wrote. “Shine on Mikey.”

Alpinists knew Gardner for bold ascents that tick a list of great peaks: a climb and ski of Alaska’s Mount Foraker; a speed ascent of the south face of nearby Denali; and even a “backyard” climb and ski tour of seven Teton peaks, covering 24 miles and 20,670 vertical feet in 20 hours and 15 minutes.

“He almost preferred to be identified as a skateboarder first,” said Chris Figenshau, a fellow Exum guide. Figenshau told Gardner that Figenshau’s son was learning how to skate and Gardner offered to help.

“Sure enough Michael Gardner came, shirt off, dominating,” Figenshau said of a day at the skatepark. “He kind of hung around with my kid — just ’cuz.”

Fellow guide Corn saw Gardner’s riding brilliance too. “When he was on a skateboard, the world stood still for him,” Corn said.

Unfathomable

Gardner wasn’t a chest-thumping fame-seeker who carried banners to the summits, friends said, but he was famous among alpinists. He lived at the foot of the Tetons, had an address over the range in Idaho and came from his family’s hometown of Ridgway, Colorado.

His father mentored Corn’s development as an Exum guide. When George Gardner died on the Grand, “Michael and I became close friends,” Corn said.

“I tried to be kind of an older brother — whatever you could be to somebody who lost their dad,” Corn said. But soon enough the younger crop of climbers including Michael Gardner, “surpassed everything your generation did,” Corn said.

“This is tough for us at Exum,” Corn said, of the loss. “I just can’t fathom what his family’s going through.

“You’re not supposed to have to bury your husband — and your son — the same way.”

Michael Gardner is survived by his mother, Colleen and sister, Megan.

“I saw him in Squamish, climbing,” Corn said of their last meeting. “I got to give him a hug. He was headed to Nepal.”