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.

Marko Prezelj

Actually, he finds it nonsense that mountaineers are awarded. “Basically it’s impossible to compare any climbs, because every climb has a different emotion,” Marko Prezelj told me a year ago during the  “Piolet d’Or” celebrations, the “Oscar of the climbers”. “It’s bizarre. It’s like you are making love and making an article out of it. If it’s poetry, maybe it’s okay. But it is a thin line between romantic poetry and pornography.” As in 2015, Marko was again awarded the Golden Ice Axe in 2016. Last weekend, the Slovene received the prize in La Grave in the French Alps, along with his compatriot Urban Novak, the American Hayden Kennedy and the Frenchman Manu Pellissier – for their first ascent of the South Face of the 6176-meter-high Cerro Kishtwar in the Indian Himalayas. Thus Marko is now holding a record that he actually doesn’t want to have.

Festival instead of competition

Successful team on Cerro Kishtwar: Hayden Kennedy, Marko Prezelj, Manu Pellissier, Urban Novak (from l. to r. – along with Wojciech Kurtyka 3. from l.)

For Prezelj, it was the fourth Piolet d’Or after 1992, 2007 and 2015. No climber was honored more frequently than he. Mountain adventures, says Marko, must have three fundamental elements: “unknown, uncertain, exposure”. This is leading him again and again to exceptional destinations – what has been impressing the different juries, already beginning with the first Piolet d’Or ceremony in 1992. “It’s like an old marriage,”, says Prezelj. “I was the first one and since then I keep a kind of certain distance. I lost a kind of desire to get it. This is the problem why I have a more critical prospective.” Marko’s last year’s message – “Don’t make a competition, make a festival!” – seems to have been heard. With almost the same words, the British jury member Victor Saunders announced this year’s event.

Third Piolet d’Or for Fowler and Ramsden

Mick Fowler (r.) and Paul Ramsden

The nine-member jury, that also included the top climbers Silvo Karo from Slovenia, Valeri Babanov from Russia and Raphael Slawinsky from Canada, chose three other exceptional projects: The British Mick Fowler and Paul Ramsden won their third Piolet d’Or, for their first ascent of the 6571-meter- high Gave Ding, a remote mountain in northwestern Nepal. The two Ukrainians Mikhail Fomin and Nikita Balabanov were awarded for their new route via the Northwest Pillar of the 7348-meter-high Talung in Nepal. And finally the American Jerome Sullivan, the Argentinian Diego Simari, and Lise Billon and Antoine Moineville, both from France, received the Golden Ice Axe, for their first ascent of the Northeast Pillar of the 2550-meter-high Cerro Riso Patron in Patagonia.
The lifetime achievement award went to the great Polish climber Wojciech Kurtyka. The now 68-year-old had set climbing milestones, especially in the 1980s with numerous extremely difficult routes on the highest mountains on earth.