Paul Gagner thanks for that history on your friendship with Ian and I'm sorry for your loss as well.
Just a thought but perhaps when you and Jeremy are out on a tower putting up an FA you name it after yer friend.
Just really thinking about this tonight. Really see how important it is to get after life every day and not take for granted you'll get another day or chance or opportunity to do or say something. Seize it folks and tell the ones you love that you love them just don't think they know it you have to tell them.
Goodnight and may Ian's family find some peace tonight knowing the pain and suffering of this disease is over and he is free from a state of being none of us would ever want after living in the high and wild places we seek as climbers.
Ian,
You kept your dream alive in all of us.
I wish your family the peace and love that many of us have felt for you on this journey.
We're all just pilgrims on this road.
Ian and I started exchanging emails just about a year ago and it wasn't too long before we were insulting each others climbing ability and mothers (Jeremy style). He was going to solo ZM and I was planning to solo Lost in America. We joked about lobbing sh#t bags at each other and also swinging over and enjoying a non alcoholic beer (neither of us drank) together. He'd send me a web link of a water ballon launcher he had found and I'd tell about a dart gun I had found or the super duper Wrist Rocket I was going to get. We'd laugh and laugh and laugh.
Right now, I think Ian would enjoy it if we had a full on, typical ST, name calling, fake avatar commenting, rude private email sending "discussion" about who was going to get his gear or how we were going to divvie it up!
Cragman, if Ian had said that to me I'd have told him that he had better have his aiders reinforced since the regular ones wouldn't support his fat ass!
I had known Ian Gill through his partner BITD, Richard Leversee as we crossed paths in the Southern Sierra. We would frequently hang out at Leversee's parents summer home in Camp Nelson. I'm sure Leversee's parents had no clue of the goings-on of the very first (and only) climbers' haven in The Needles area; certainly at times a cross between Camp 4 & Animal House. Nonetheless, many an adventure had been launched out of that place, fostered by many a late-night 'enhanced' bullsh*t sessions. 'Truth was, we frequently turned that BS into reality. Ian had been a regular participant in what most people thought was madness. We looked back at those days as some of the best times of our lives.
Ian had a knack for laying monikers to his few and precious possessions. In particular, he drove 'The Mighty D,' a small Datsun pickup with a shell over the bed. On a late season trip to an obscure Kern crag, Leversee and I had discovered a small piece of rose quartz that resembled one hemisphere of a human brain (don't recall which side). In the area where we discovered this stone, the fallen oak leaves had gathered only in the tiny dry watercourse of the forest floor. Ian would frequently recite the 'tale' of our journey of finding this artifact, AND became the official keeper of 'The Brainstone' that was found by 'The Leafstream.' Ian would jokingly attempt to procure the 'ultimate climbing knowledge/power' from The Brainstone, only to 'bang' it against his head and find that, "It doesn't fit!?" Ian's levity had great entertainment value. I can still see Ian standing behind the Mighty D or on an El Cap attempt we did together doing his theatrics. The Mighty D years later, met an untimely demise with Ian at the wheel; Ian survived, however The Brainstone was thrown from the wreckage, never to be found.
On an obscure, but relevant note, Ian did the 2nd Ascent of The Romantic Warrior at The Needles BITD with Leversee prior to venturing to El Capitan.
Even though some people move on, lose touch and have to act like grown-ups, we are still bonded together from the experience forever.
ec
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