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THETHREECLIMBERS:JESSROSKELLEY,HANSJORGAUERANDDAVIDLAMA‘Ididn’tunderstandtheriskofdying....Finally,
whenIwas18or19,IgotitandwouldtellJess,
“Don’tscrewup”’‘It’snotfairanditwillneverbefair’
ALLISONROSKELLEY,JESS’SWIFEJORDANROSKELLEY,JESS’SKIDSISTERrope. Some of their gear was recovered, as
was Jess Roskelley’s iPhone.
Jess was taken to a funeral home in Can-
more. The Roskelleys, who drove to Can-
more the day after the three went missing,
visited his body. “I needed to see him,” his
mother Joyce Roskelley says. “I had been
terrified that he had suffocated beneath
the snow or that animals had gotten to
him.”
He had a traumatic injury above his left
eye, possibly from being struck by a rock. “I
knew he must have died instantly and had
not suffered,” Joyce says. “It was comfort-
ing for me.”
0<" $$ <
n May 17, a celebration was
held in Spokane for Jess Ros-
kelley. The service, held in a
theatre, was delayed to accom-
modate the crowd. For two hours, one per-
son after another rose to eulogize him.
Allison Roskelley’s voice shook as she
stood at the podium. “Your dream was en-
grained in your soul,” she said. “It is some-
thing I never imagined taking away from
you. I trusted you were very conservative
and calculated in the risks you took. I know
your No. 1 priority was to come back
home.”
The service ended with a series of pho-
tos on a video screen above the stage: Jess
vacuuming with Mugs in a backpack, Jess
wearing bunny ears, Jess wakeboarding
naked behind a boat.
The next day, his parents had people to
their home overlooking a wildlife conser-
vation area. They live on a flyway for Amer-
ican bitterns, Canada geese and tundra
swans. There are bald eagles, elk and ot-
ters, too. Off in the distance, one can see
the silhouette of Mount Spokane.
In a quiet moment, Joyce sat at the din-
ing room table and talked about the hard-
ships endured by the spouses of moun-
taineers.
She and John have been married for
nearly a half-century.
When he went on an expedition, she
would get letters every three to six weeks.
Sometimes a stack of 10 would arrive and
she would read them in chronological or-
der.
“Just because you got a stack, there was
no guarantee that he was alive,” she says.
“Every time he left, he would say goodbye.
While he chose not to die, we both accept-
ed the responsibility.”! " 0"0 $ 2/ <ohn Roskelley visited Howse
Peak three times to retrace his
son’s steps.
At the end of May, he found
the tent the climbers shared at the base of
the mountain the night before they set out.
Combing through snow, he also recovered
sleeping bags, skis, a bit of clothing, gloves
and ice tools. On a glacier he found Jess’s
inReach GPS texting device.
He returned on July 2 with Tim Sanford,
the high-school buddy with whom Jess
had begun rock climbing. More clothing
was found, as well as a camera and ice tool
belonging to Auer and Lama’s GoPro video
recorder.
In late July, Jordan Roskelley joined her
father on the mountain that took her
brother’s life. They spent hours bush-
whacking their way in and scrambling over
rocks and boulders until they reached the
base. “Seeing it from a helicopter or from
the road doesn’t serve it justice,” Jordan
says. “It is so much bigger than you pos-
sibly could imagine. It was such an im-
mense fall.”
She and her father found a coat, ropes,
batteries from headlamps, crampon parts,
ski poles and more skis. “There were a lot
of helmet parts,” John says. “Their helmets
got busted up pretty badly.”
He used photos recovered to track the
climb. Their ascent began at 5:49 a.m. A
picture taken at 9:57 a.m. shows Lama
struggling up a steep ridge. At 12:44 p.m.,
they are on the summit. In the last photo
taken, at 1:27 p.m., they had begun to rap-
pel.
Sometime shortly after that, John Ros-kelley believes a cornice broke off from a
precipice and thundered down on top of
them.
“They just got hit by this thing,” he says.
“There had to be tremendous force.”
In July, the North Face invited the fam-
ilies of all three to Austria for a memorial
service. “We got to know the other parents,
and did some hiking and biking with
them,” he says. “It was a good get-togeth-
er.”
He was drawn to Alberta after the acci-
dent in an attempt to make sense of the
tragedy. He is stoic from decades of scaling
dangerous peaks. He has recreated all but
about 30 seconds of the climb.
“I am used to going to celebrations and
memorials for climbers,” he says. “Death
happens, and that is the way it is.”
His voice trails off.
Eventually, Allison Roskelley will visit
Howse Peak.
She was a rodeo queen in high school, so
in May, 2015, Jess took her to one in Win-
throp, Wash., and proposed in the centre of
the arena on bended knee. Two months
later, they were married in a climbing area
north of Spokane. They went on a mini-
honeymoon to Montana and camped be-
neath limestone walls in the wilderness.
They fished on the Yellowstone River with
his friend, Sanford, serving as their guide.
Jess and Tim taught Allison to fly-cast and
she reeled in a brown trout the first day.
From the moment they met, the cou-
ple’s shared love for angling solidified their
bond. His grandfather, Fenton, was an out-
doors writer. Allison was raised in Idaho
stalking steelhead trout with her grand-dad.
In their last trip together, a month be-
fore Jess died, they went deep-sea fishing
in Costa Rica. They dined at sunset on the
beach on ceviche prepared from the tuna
they caught.
She still listens to voicemails that he
left. At times, she pauses outside their
home and dreads going in. Without him, it
seems empty. She misses his flatulence,
smile and silly jokes, and how he chased
her down the driveway, half-naked, to
sneak in one more kiss as she left for work.
She struggles most with how she imag-
ines the accident. The avalanche starting.
Jess realizing what was happening. How
scared he was. What was going through
his head about her, Mugs, his family.
“It’s not fair and it will never be fair,”
she says. “I planned to spend the rest of
my life with him.”
In reality, he spent the rest of his life
with her.
She has not felt ready yet, but one day
she will drive to Banff National Park,
where they spent weekends in a pop-up
camper. Howse Peak will rise before her
and she will gaze up its towering face. She
took a mountaineering course a few years
ago to better understand what he did.
“I know I will feel his spirit and be en-
gulfed by him,” Allison says.
He said goodbye each time he left on a
climb.“I accepted that this could hap-
pen,” she says. “It doesn’t mean it isn’t
hard every day, but I am owning it. I can
move forward living and honour him.”
In a funeral home in Canmore, she held
his hand one last time.