Ed Leeper passed away this morning

Ed Leeper passed this morning at 7 after a long battle with multi-stage dementia.  I didn't really develop a rapport with him since I only knew him after he developed dementia and he didn't really want to talk about climbing.  My wife was his MPA and was a great comfort to him in his last days.  Can anyone that knew him  help with his eulogy, and post here, if that is OK?  Probably will not be a funeral because of the Covid19.  Thank You!        

KevinCO wrote: Ed Leeper passed this morning at 7 after a long battle with multi-stage dementia.  I didn't really develop a rapport with him since I only knew him after he developed dementia and he didn't really want to talk about climbing.  My wife was his MPA and was a great comfort to him in his last days.  Can anyone that knew him  help with his eulogy, and post here, if that is OK?  Probably will not be a funeral because of the Covid19.  Thank You!        

Thanks to you and especially your wife for caring about him — and caring for him. 

I met him once, about 30 years ago, and talked with him about his many innovations. His Z pitons are the best ever. The Cam Hooks took hammerless aid to a new level of excitement. And the Friend of a Friend helped me make many Friends. 

Condolences to Ed's family and friends.
RIP

Condolences to Ed Leeper's family and friends. What an amazing innovator. So many great contributions to climbing. RIP.

I offer my sincere condolences to Ed’s Family and Friends.

I have “Thanked God” many times after clipping into one of his hangers. Now it time to Thank God for Ed Leeper!

RIP 

Condolences to friends and family from another person deeply impacted by his contributions 

RIP!

We stand on the shoulders of such Giants. Thank you, Edward Leeper.

I have poked with Ed Leeper's nut tools, stacked his Z-pitons, and trembled on his hooks.  His creativity helped make some wonderful climbing experiences.  Presente!

This isn’t much help, but I met Ed Leeper in late 1966. We lived in Berkeley in (I believe) the1800 block of Francisco St. I rented a room in the front house and he lived alone in the small house in back. He was a skinny guy, mid-20s, friendly but intense, distracted. Ed was rarely home and that seemed to have something to do with the black steel widgets he made, somehow, somewhere. His widgets were used by “climbers” and seemed to be an innovation. It was not clear to me that Ed himself was a climber as much as a maker of things, but that was what interested me...he created stuff. I only really talked to him once but his name stuck with me and, after I learned there was this thing called rock climbing, I presumed he’d made a name for himself and a career supplying the sport with high quality gear. This morning I decided to google Ed Leeper to see what became of him and read here that he’d just died. That’s too bad. I hope he had a good life. 

RIP Ed.  Didn't know him, but had a z-piton or two on my rack (before nuts took over) for many years.

I worked for Ed for a few years in the early 1970's making pitons at his tiny shop in the mountains above Boulder. Every day he would make us exactly the same lunch. A hamburger patty with no bun, cottage cheese, and a simple salad. All the machinery for making the pitons was foot operated and it was a long day stomping down on the lever to punch, shear and bend the metal. A physicist, Ed had come to Boulder from I think Berkeley to work for the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics. After years of working on research projects that failed to yield information, he quit physics and bought an old back hoe excavator and went into the digging business. He liked it that when you dug a hole, put a pipe in it and covered it up, something tangible had been accomplish. Although Ed hadn't climbed since the early 1960's, he was interested in the transition from pitons to clean climbing. When I took a leader fall in Eldo as an aid hook rotated off an edge, I used the shop to make the first wide based hooks for my own use. He liked the idea and put them into production in two sizes. The narrow was for using in 1/4" bolt holes when bolts pulled out, as some of the 1/2" long ones, especially those placed by Royal, occasionally did. The wide ones were for for edges. Later he made some of the first nut tools. He would make samples and I would use them and after a few rounds they would go into production. At one point he brought me some wide hooks he called cam hooks and asked me to try them out. I had moved from aid to free climbing then, but went out and tried them and Ed started making them. Together we made thousands of bolt hangers that later would often crack. On a new big wall aid route one would need to carry as many as 50 hangers and weight was a consideration. This was long before the idea of sport climbing had become acceptable. He and his girl friend Nancy later did a lot of research into the health effects of electric power lines. He was a very smart, private, and humble man. He was always excited by thinking up better equipment for rock climbing.

I rented a house from Nancy (Ed's girlfriend of many years). Nancy passed away about 10 years ago. When ever we needed something fixed Ed would fix it. He did not talk about climbing much
but i told him how much i used his "cams". He paid for magazine ad space to warn and recall metal hangers that were weak. A good man

Jamie i think alot of people look up to you to...i know i do...peace

Sorry to hear this. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. We are building an Outdoor Recreation Archive here at Utah State University to preserve the history of gear pioneers. Please let me know if we can help by creating a Leeper Collection of sorts to help preserve Ed's memory.

https://libguides.usu.edu/c.php?g=1004210&p=7273503

Thanks!

Tom Halicki wrote:  

I immediately noticed this mailbox when I was driving around Wallstreet up canyon from Boulder when I moved here.  RIP Ed.

I had the pleasure of living on Wallstreet 1968-1970. I enjoyed seeing Ed's mailbox also. I had had an unsuccessful year at Berkeley a few years before and was peripherally familiar with his name (and was pretty excited to stumble across him in this out-of-the-way canyon).

(I thought he was instrumental with the RURP, but googling tonite suggests that wasn't the case.)  RIP, indeed. Smooth sailing.

Sad to hear that Ed had died. I was in communication with him about the problem with weathered hangers. I happened to have had a bunch that had sat in my closet since the early 1970s. Sometime in the late 1990s upon hearing the problems with the hangers I contacted Ed to ask if he'd want my hangers to test, I think I sent an email. Well eventually we touched base and had a couple of long telephone conversations, and he tested those old hangers... they were fine. He did take responsibility for informing the community about the potential problems. He felt that we should be using stainless steel, and he sent me some of his wonderful z-pitons. 

He had trained as a physicist, I thought at Columbia, but didn't complete his degree. Parts of our conversations were about physics. 

Ed was a true member of the climbing community through his innovative climbing equipment. He was able, somehow, to continue to manufacture that gear for something like 60 years.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Found this on a hike. Is this the same "Leeper"? What does it do?

Frank Marino wrote:

Found this on a hike. Is this the same "Leeper"? What does it do?

It’s a nut removal tool. 

It's called a nut tool.  Climbers place metal chocks (nuts) in cracks to anchor their ropes to.  The "nuts" have a cable on them that the climber clips a carabiner through and then to the rope.  Sometimes the nuts are hard to remove as they get jammed in the crack.  The nut tool helps in removing them.

Frank Marino wrote:

Found this on a hike. Is this the same "Leeper"? What does it do?

 

Would you consider selling this?