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Remembering Michael Gardner

In January 2022, I was leaving Grand Teton National Park’s Bradley Taggert parking lot when I spotted Michael Gardner hitchhiking at the corner of the road. It’s not a common place to hitch, and I hadn’t caught up with Mike for a while. Intrigued, I offered him a ride.

“We left our car in the Death Canyon lot this morning and traversed over here,” Mike explained after climbing into my backseat. The traverse was a linkup of several peaks and canyons, most of which the average backcountry skier won’t even look at in their lifetimes. For Mike, it was an average Sunday spent training for Alaska or the Himalaya.

The thing was, Mike was more interested in what I’d done that day. Every time I asked about his epic, he’d tell me he’d been moving since 3 a.m. and the snow above 10,000 feet was windswept and horrible. Then, he asked my ski partner and me about conditions on Maverick, a commonly skied subpeak known for its low-angle glades and protected powder stashes. He wanted to know how things were going at the magazine. We shared some story ideas, he said he had a few projects he was planning to send to our sister publication, Alpinist, but wanted to pitch to Backcountry next time.

My greatest regret as an editor will likely be that I never worked on a story with Mike. He died while climbing Nepal’s 24,501-foot Jannu East with his longtime friend and climbing partner Sam Hennessey this week.

Mike will be remembered for his laundry list of skiing and mountaineering feats: first descents and ascents, speed records, link ups that challenge what’s humanly possible. But Mike didn’t want to be defined by his mountain pursuits. Instead, he fought to form a different identity. He loved to skateboard. I would often see him at the local Driggs skate park when I was walking my dog. He also took part in our annual Teton Valley Skijoring event. While most skiers would get towed behind a horse once, maybe twice, before deciding it was enough, Mike would lap the course all day in his old purple windbreaker before swapping to be the one on the horse.

Most of all, he was just as stoked to hear about the most average day out climbing or skiing as he was to hear about your first descent or speed record. He didn’t care for spray culture, boasting about doing things the biggest or the best or the fastest. Afterall, he’d probably quietly done something bigger, better or faster. Instead of the achievement, it was the experience, the simple joy of finding a perfect hand crack or hidden powder stash. It’s what made him a great alpinist, a great guide and a great person.

After learning of his passing, I went back to Alpinist 77, in which Mike wrote about his father’s death on the Grand Teton in 2008 and the complicated feelings that came with a life in the mountains. It can now be read on Alpinist.com along with Editor-in-Chief Derek Franz’s eulogy. —Betsy Manero

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