Our community loses a number of good friends, each year. Some of these people we never know, some we've heard their name, some we know from this or other sites, and some are our best friends. Some will be lost tomorrow, and some were lost during the golden age of climbing.

I'd like to suggest, as a potential enhancement to the site, the creation of a "Friends We've Lost" section. I envision it wouldn't be setup too differently than any other route section, where someone could do a write-up on the person and others could contribute pictures, comments, news clippings, etc. about that person. Perhaps some other format would work better.

I think it would bring a very unique aspect to Mountain Project, and allow friends and family to pay tribute to these individuals in a setting that honors what may have been a very big part of their life (climbing). I suppose persons could also honor names of the past, too -- almost like a mini encyclopedia of climbers.

Anyhow, I am personally fond of the idea, as it would be a good way to honor our friends that may otherwise be forgotten to the world, and a good way for people to look and see who has [unfortunately] passed on.

I can remember a lot of fellow climbers we've lost this past year or two... some close to us, others not.

I don't know of any other resource (AAC, Magazines, other sites) that do anything of the sort... though the American Alpine News used to (and may still) have a 'Remembered Friends' (or similar) section.

How do you feel about this idea?

Hey Avery,

I think this is a great idea, and one I am glad you mentioned. When you posted this, I went to look at the MP.com profile of someone who is no longer with us. In this case, the profile of that person was clearly marked as to their passing. Other's may not be, depending on the how well the news was spread. I am glad that the site acknowledges the individual.
If a person has contributed to MP.com, their stuff should be archived, which is happening anyway. It also seems like a good idea for people to be able to leave something at a memorial for them. Should it be some type of community memorial where anyone could post or would it be better to administrate it?
I don't see why a memorial couldn't be established for anyone else too, regardless of if they ever participated in anyway to this site.

I think that's a beautiful idea! I've known several families that have created personal remembrances within their homes when someone dies, and it's been painful but also comforting. I'm not sure how different people would feel about the public nature, but I've seen things written in on-line obituary guestbooks of people I've known that have died, that were very touching and nice to know about. I would imagine there could be a wealth of little anecdotes that could mean a lot to those grieving.

It's a interesting idea!

Sounds like a lot of work for someone, but a great idea none the less. Just out of curiosity, I just visited a page of someone I never knew. You wouldn't know what had happened.

My idea for it would be an editorial (obituary) added to that person's page, then kind of a guest-log for comments. Now I'm depressed.

Aw, come on Mike. It's not depressing! It's all how you approach memorials.

Avery, I appreciate your intention with this. I have thought about this same thing before. What I have done in the past was to add an "editor's note" on the person's profile page along with a picture if I could find one and any additional information or news articles, as with

Ryan Sayers
Brian Reynolds
Vernon Stiefel

Until we have a better system in place, I would say if you want to write something up for a friend you've lost, get in touch with one of the site administrators and have them post it.

These people - our community - should not be forgotten.

I agree, Hank. It's less interesting to focus on what went wrong, including the last thing that went wrong, with someone's life than all the stuff that went right.

General ideas:

• Move their pages to an individual forum, so collectively we know where we can go to memorialize.

• Allow a comments section; however that would require some serious scrutiny by people who can 86 stuff.

• Hopefully that person has buddies who can write up the memorial, somehow MP would have to determine who's best for that.

I think a respectfull memorials section is a great idea.

So, I guess the events that caused me to bring this up again were seeing the following threads, which I thought were sad, yet very positive -- but certainly not morbid. I had initially mentioned this to the site admins without success, and thought I'd get a pulse from the community. I didn't know until John posted that this was brought up on RC.com.

steve dieckhoff

Pete Absolon on SuperTopo

and the story of Mike McGlynn (whose personal page still needs to be updated).

Anyhow, I personally don't see this as being approached in a morbid manner -- rather, as a positive remembrance.

I think this is a great idea. I think the updating of a fallen friend's home page is a nice touch but it would be nice to have a special section as well. I second the opinion that all posts to such a section should be reviewed first by an administrator before it appears to the community at large.

The simplist thing to do would be to create a forum dedicated to this, say called "Memorials".

Each individual would have a dedicated thread, and the first post in the thread would link to their user page.

We don't have a mechanism for a post not to appear before an admin reviews it, but all the admins can agree to delete any posts that are not respectful if they see it.

This is very easy to do, so let me know if everyone thinks it makes sense.

Andy

Sounds good Andy.

Cheers

john

Sounds great to me Andy.

I've added a "Memorial" forum and moved the three threads I knew about in there...

www.mountainproject.com/v/memorial/106127522

If you find other threads that need to be moved, let me or Ron Olsen know.

Thanks
Andy

From this thread and from looking a little around the site, I know about these folks who need to be added:

Mike Sofranko
Ryan Sayers
Brian Reynolds

Who was the fella who was hit by falling ice at Vail a couple of years ago?

Rod Evens was the fella who was hit by the falling block of ice at Vail a few years back (found the name in some of the old CB.com archives).

Thanks, Andy.

Kirra -

I've moved all but Reids. I don't have time to review the thread right now, so I'l defer to group judgement on that thread.

Andy

Thank you Andy, very much!