May 2008: 17-year-old Hayden Kennedy, Jonas Waterman, and I were a few pitches up El Cap’s El Niño (VI 5.13 b/c A0), a notoriously runout, nearly-free route on El Cap’s steep southeast face. The wall looked absolutely huge from our belay stance a few hundred feet off the ground. 
 
 Hayden stepped off the anchor and headed into one of the first few cruxes—near vertical face climbing with minuscule handholds and little crystals for footholds. He moved quickly, confidently, and when he got into big-fall territory on hard climbing he simply “journeyed on,” as he said. It didn’t take long to see that Hayden, on his first El Cap route, was the future of climbing. Here was a kid ticking off 5.14s at Rifle every few weeks, with a solid lead head, and miles and miles of hard and varied climbing under his belt. I was impressed. 
 
 Then Hayden and I drove out to Yosemite that May, he pointed out towers that he’d climbed long before he “officially became a climber,” when he began taking the sport seriously at age 13 or 14. 
 
 “I grew up climbing with my dad when I was super young. But I wasn’t that into it,” he tells me. “Then as a teenager I did more sport and trad climbing. When I was in high school, when I met you, I started climbing with other people then, and not just my dad, and that’s when I became my own climber. Know what I mean?” 
 
 Hayden has it in his genes. He’s the son of Julie and Michael Kennedy. Michael, a renowned alpinist in his own right, established such routes as the Moonflower Buttress on Mt. Hunter among others. He has completed countless first ascents on ice and rock and was editor-in-chief at Climbing magazine for 30 years. Hayden graduated from high school at Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado, and decided to pass on college for that moment, and just focus on his passion: To climb how he wanted to, where he wanted to. Oh, how he has succeeded. 
 
 “My first expedition, I went to Patagonia in 2009-2010. I turned 20 there. I’ve been there three more times. I climbed Fitz Roy my first year, and then smaller peaks and started free climbing peaks.” 
 
 To sustain a living Hayden works like anyone else—just not a regular job. “I work for sure,” he says. “I have the sponsorship gig, and I hang Christmas lights, paint. I’ve worked at a bar, consignment work, odd jobs and different stuff.” 
 
 Kennedy relies on grants from the outdoor industry to fund his expeditions. “We got the AAC [American Alpine Club] Mountain Fellowship grant my first year. I also got a grant to go to the Bugaboos one time. That was pretty cool.” 
 
 n recent years, Kennedy has grown as an alpinist, climbing more towers in the Fitzroy massif, including a near bolt-free first ascent of the southeast face of Cerro Torre. It was an ascent that proved controversial due to their removal of over 100 bolts of the neighboring Compressor Route when they rappelled down the wall. Back in town, they were threatened by locals, arrested, and spent the night in jail for removing the bolts. 
 
 His career highlights include the first ascent of Carbondale Short Bus (named after his van) a 5.14- in Indian Creek; an ascent of the notoriously runout Bachar/Yerian 5.11c R/X; climbing a new route up K7, followed by a new route up the South Face of the Ogre (Baintha Brakk), a formation near K2, topping out at 7,285 meters that had only been previously climbed twice. In May, he and Nik Berry made a 10-hour all-free ascent of the Hallucinogen Wall (VI 5.13+ R) in Colorado’s Black Canyon. 
 
 Regarding Hayden’s ascents of K7 and the Ogre in the same season, Berry stated that Kennedy had “probably had the best season of climbing in alpine history. Its ridiculous. It’s so fun climbing with Hayden Kennedy. He’s such a rad, humble dude. He has this lighthearted attitude about everything. And super-psyched as well. His skill base is insane. This kid can climb everything. He doesn’t get super pissed if it’s not his day or things aren’t going well or whatever. He doesn’t throw wobblers. He’s just like ‘whatever, I’ll come back or not come back, it’s not a big issue.’” 
 
 Hayden takes it in stride: “I’ve had lots of big adventures and lots of close calls. In 2011 Jason Kruk and I tried to climb the North Face of North Twin. It was scary. We got caught in bad weather. It was too dangerous to rappel off and we had to traverse off. We spent a few nights out in the open without enough bivvy stuff. I don’t know if I would call that an epic. We got out of that unscathed.” 
 
 Regarding his success rate of climbing big mountains, Hayden says, “I think alpine climbing comes down to 40 percent luck, 40 percent motivation, and 20 percent skill. You have to be really motivated to do that. You have to be able to climb pitches that aren’t that good. You’re just climbing to the top of these things instead of the next pitch. You just keep building and dealing with the bad rock and deal with whatever. I feel if you’re really motivated to do it you can just keep doing it. I don’t really know.” 
 
 I ask him how he does it and his reply sums up what makes him so special: “I’m just trying to have fun and not take it too seriously.” Indeed, Hayden Kennedy’s career is going to be fun. ||||| On Saturday, October 7, 27-year-old alpinist Hayden Kennedy was skiing with his girlfriend, Inge Perkins, 23, on Imp Peak south of Bozeman, Montana. The pair triggered a slide that buried and killed Perkins. Kennedy survived the slide, but returned home and took his own life. 
 
 Perkins had a beacon, but it was turned off and in her pack, said Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Bozeman. “That’s why she wasn’t found.” 
 
 Hayden “never called 911” to report the slide, Chabot said. “He left a note with locations as to where the avalanche happened. They were incredibly clear directions for where to find her.” 
 
 Early-season avalanches “catch people all the time,” Chabot said. “This was not a particularly huge avalanche” yet “it packed a punch....We had huge storms back in September that put three or four feet of snow on the ground” then another foot around October 1, with high winds that loaded the snow on a firm bed. 
 
 Kennedy’s family released a statement saying that they sorrowfully respected Hayden’s decision and praised their son’s openness to the world while he was alive. 
 
 Perkins was a beloved climber from Bozeman who was working on a degree at Montana State University. “Just like Hayden was someone I looked up to, you were, too,” professional climber Chelsea Rude wrote on Facebook, addressing Perkins. “You two were perfect for each other. Both with the biggest hearts a human can have and smiles that made anyone feel welcome, heard and loved.” 
 
 Trying my best to honor you. Thanks for putting up with my camera guys. A post shared by Michael Lim (@murkytimes) on Oct 10, 2017 at 11:17am PDT 
 
 Kennedy has long been one of the top climbers in the world. Though, unless you were steeped in the minutiae of climbing, you wouldn’t necessarily know it. He avoided most media. When Outside reached out to him four years ago about coverage he replied that he was “just not really interested in being in the mag. I have nothing against Outside but I would rather just be out of the media in general. I think that it distracts and over hypes everything, for me it’s just not worth it. My passion for climbing is my own experience and doesn't need to be blow[n] out of portion.” 
 
 Though his accomplishments were many—from big walls in Mexico to bold first ascents in the Karakoram—he was mostly widely known to the non-climbing world for removing 125 bolts from Cerro Torre’s Compressor Route in Patagonia after making the first fair means ascent of the Southeast Ridge with Jason Kruk in 2012. Casare Maestri had put in and used the bolts to ascend the pillar 42 years before, and many had followed in his path. Some thought the bolts should be left as a monument to history. Kennedy and Kruk sought to return the mountain to its initial state, and were both praised and criticized for that decision. 
 
 In a letter to his son published in the Alpinist shortly after their effort, Michael wrote: “The story of the Southeast Ridge is one of the distance between our ideals and what we are willing to sacrifice to live up to them. As alpinists, we should strive to reach our dream summits with a minimum of means, leaving the least trace of our passage...Chopping the bolts was a reminder that we need to abide by what we say we believe in. For making that decision, some will call you and Jason heroes. Others will call you villains. Don't buy into either narrative.” 
 
 Just a few weeks ago, Kennedy published an essay on the climbing blog Evening Sends that contemplated climbing, loss, and mortality. 
 
 “Over the last few years, as I’ve watched too many friends go to the mountains only to never return, I’ve realized something painful,” he wrote. “It’s not just the memorable summits and crux moves that are fleeting. Friends and climbing partners are fleeting, too. This is the painful reality of our sport, and I’m unsure what to make of it. Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse…I see both light and dark in climbing. Through this recognition, true learning begins and a full awareness of the brevity of our time becomes clearer. It’s difficult to accept the fact that we cannot control everything in life, yet we still try, and maybe our path changes to something totally unexpected…Maybe the most genuine aspects of any tale are the sputterings and the silences, the acknowledgments of failure, the glimmerings in the dark. And maybe one genuine reason to try to share our stories about days we actually send something, when we are alive and at the height of our powers, is to try to bring back what’s past, lost, or gone. Perhaps by doing so, we might find some light illuminating a new way forward.” ||||| Close Get email notifications on Whitney Bermes daily! 
 
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– World-class alpinist Hayden Kennedy and his partner, Inge Perkins, were skiing in Montana on Saturday when an early-season avalanche on Imp Peak near Bozeman took the couple by surprise at 10,000 feet, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The slide buried Perkins, 23, and partially covered Kennedy, 27. He searched in vain but never found Perkins. Then Kennedy headed home and took his own life, Outside reports; his family says Kennedy was unable to deal with the "unbearable loss." Kennedy didn't call 911 but left "incredibly clear directions for where to find her," Doug Chabot of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center tells Outside. Perkins, also an accomplished climber, was wearing a beacon that could have led rescuers to her, but it was turned off, Chabot says. Her body was recovered Monday morning under 3 feet of snow, per the Post Independent. The couple had moved to Bozeman so Perkins could pursue a degree in math and education at Montana State University. Kennedy, hailed in 2014 as maybe "the best young climber on the planet," was studying for an EMT certification. He wrote recently of the pain of seeing "too many friends go to the mountains only to never return … Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse." As tributes flowed to the pair, Kennedy's family says they "sorrowfully" respect his final decision and remembered "an uncensored soul whose accomplishments as a mountaineer were always secondary to his deep friendships and mindfulness." (Another climber survived one avalanche on Everest, but perished on his second ascent.)