Hayden Kennedy (1990-2017)

What a tragic end of one of the best climbers in the world. The American Hayden Kennedy took his own life at the age of 27 years.  On Saturday, Hayden and his partner in life Inge Perkins, like Kennedy an experienced climber and skier, had been on a ski tour on Imp Peak in the US state of Montana. They were caught by an avalanche. Perkins was fully buried by the snow masses, rescuers recovered the 23-year-old dead. Kennedy, who was partially buried, survived. On Sunday he committed suicide.

“Unbearable loss”

Hayden survived the avalanche but not the unbearable loss of his partner in life”, wrote his father Michael Kennedy,  editor of the magazine “Climbing” for several decades, on Facebook. “He chose to end his life. Myself and his mother Julie sorrowfully respect his decision.”

Two times Piolet d’Or winner

In January 2012, Hayden Kennedy had made world-wide headlines when he and his compatriot Jason Kruk had repeated the “Compressor Route” of the Italian Cesare Maestri on Cerro Torre in Patagonia and  then removed the most bolts set by Maestri in 1970. In the same year, Kennedy – along with Kyle Dempster and Josh Wharton – opened a new route throught the South Face of the 7,285-meter-high Ogre in the Karakoram in Pakistan. He and Dempster reached the summit, it was only the third ascent of the mountain. For their first ascent of the route, the US trio was awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”. In 2016 he got the renowned award for the second time, for the first ascent of the South Face of the 6176-meter-high Cerro Kishtwar in the Indian Himalayas, along with the Slowenians Marko Prezejl and Urban Novak and the Frenchman Manu Pellissier.