I met Jeff at a time when I was incredibly motivated and eager to start swinging tools. Because of that he had a lot of influence on my perception of ice and mixed climbing and on what someone can be capable of accomplishing in the mountains.
We had started our partnership out by dry tooling at Finley and soon we were skiing in the Missions, searching for ice and dry tooling at his Sleeping Child Crag. Seeing Jeff's drive in our early adventures had me wondering, what was the extent of his motivation, how far could he push it?
Just last fall, in 2025, Jeff had texted me asking if I was free to climb the north face of Mount Borah in Idaho. I told him I was unable due to work and school, and I assumed that he would bail on going if he couldn't find a partner. Just a few days later I saw on his social media that he had apparently summited Borah and by the looks of it was solo.
He had gone out there to meet up with an internet climbing partner, however when his partner never showed at the trail head, Jeff decided he would still go for it alone.
A couple weeks passed before one morning he was sitting in the back of my truck as he, our friend Phil and I drove out to Finley for a dry tool session. In the rear view I noticed he was messing around with what looked like bandages and medical supplies. When I turned around to see what he was doing I saw that he was tending to his severely frost bitten toes, the result of a 27 hour push, through a storm, on the north face of Mount Borah. "Jesus dude that looks gnarly, how the hell are are you climbing today?" I asked him in astonishment. "Really they don't hurt that bad" He said to us.
Really they don't hurt that bad.
The toes I saw in the back of my truck that day would have had most people benched for months. But not Jeff. He was too eager to go climbing that it surpassed the pain, so eager that the following weekend after his Mount Borah epic, Jeff and his toes chased an opportunity to climb the north face of the Sphinx and successfully topped out.
His effort on Borah goes to show the extent of what his mental capabilities in the mountains were and going out to the Sphinx right after highlights his motivation to go climbing. In fact, these traits resonated with that of great alpinists and mountaineers throughout history. To be able to push on for 27 hours takes serious strength. The ability to look through the shit and keep on going is something that not everyone has. When telling us about his Borah trip he said "I got to watch the the sun rise twice."
The mental capabilities that Jeff had were certainly a strength of his in the mountains, however they were perhaps a point of weakness as well. In November of 2024, Jeff and I left Missoula at 3 am on a smash and grab trip to the Absorokas, where we intended to climb a route called War Paint.
He was still recovering from an injury he had suffered that summer, something I had not considered when driving out there. He had been recovering from a broken heel and explained to me that his doctor had cleared him to climb. Looking back on that Im assuming that his doctor had probably cleared him to gym climb, or climb somewhere roadside. But his ambition overpowered the pain in his heel and slowly, he limped his way up the trail behind me. In the mountains, Jeff didn't care about time, or about going fast, being out there was all he needed. That day I should have mentioned something about his heel, because moving slow would later come to bite us.
What happened to us that day has been a pivotal point in my climbing as it was the first time I've found myself in a serious situation while in the mountains. We had climbed the route successfully but topped out quite late in the day. As we were setting up a rappel, a storm that we knew was coming hit us hard. Little rollerball's of snow came pouring from the sky and onto the mountain. Wind gusts were blowing up and down the couloir we were standing in and soon snow from the slope above came funneling down onto us. We were in an hourglass, standing right in the pinch.
As a spindrift avalanche began pouring directly onto us we scrambled to retreat off the mountain and due to a broken v-thread tool, we were forced to leave behind several ice screws and a few alpine draws. That day we both made many mistakes. Our weak colors were exposed and we were both forced to work through it to get out of there.
When I arrived to the anchor after the first rappel I noticed Jeff visibly shivering. His jacket was covered in frozen water ice and spin drift, icicles formed from his helmet. "How are you doing man?" I asked him. "I'm fine, my hands are just really cold." Jeff suffered from Raynauds, a medical condition that limits blood circulation typically to ones fingers or toes. When I looked at his gloves I noticed that his hands were in fists inside them and each finger on them was either twisted or bent and all were frozen, covered in a thin layer of frost. "Shit dude, you want my extra pair of gloves? I have some in my pocket." "Nah I'm good, lets just get down." he said to me.
Nah I'm good.
I couldn't believe he said that to me. How was it that he didn't want dry gloves? Was he so fixated on getting down that he was looking beyond the pain in his hands? We had just spent a stress filled hour and a half of spindrift avalanches, botched v-threads, nearly dropped ropes and heavy wind gusts, all with his hands trapped in ice blocks, and now when presented with dry gloves he said he'd be alright without them. I shook my head and pulled out my extra gloves. "Put these on man."
That day made me reconsider the endeavor of alpine climbing. Seeing how quickly things can get serious made me realize that perhaps I wasn't quite ready to chase objectives like that and that I needed more experience. Jeff however, I don't think was too phased by this day. For him, this epic was just another outing.
When I got word of Jeffs disappearance, I was told that he was believed to have been somewhere west of Darby. Immeadetly, I thought that he was likely in the Bitterroot, but when I heard his car was found up Sleeping Child Road, I was surprised. For some reason it seemed strange that something could have gone wrong there, but then again accidents often happen in places you feel comfortable, places where you let your guard down. Sleeping Child is a roadside crag where he had been developing rather bold mixed lines on gear and quite often he would go out and top rope solo out there.
As of right now it is still not totally known what happened to him out there and what went wrong. Its a terribly unfortunate thing that happened and its incredibly sad to lose a partner and member of our small community.
Jeff was wild man who had a deep passion for the mountains. He was bold, and he was more than willing to give a challenge everything he had. Each outing with him was a wild adventure for better or worse and I was fortunate to be able to share some of the best days I've had in the mountains with him.
Rest easy Jeff
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