From top of the world to depths of despair | Then & Now
For 16 years after becoming (briefly) the youngest American to summit the world’s highest peak, Jess Roskelley continued to pack his life with achievement – earning income and accolades as a welder, tying the knot with the woman of his dreams and climbing into an elite echelon of American mountaineering – before it all came to a sudden tragic end in the Canadian Rockies.
Roskelley, 36, was swept to his death on April 16, 2019, by an avalanche while descending from the summit of Howse Peak on the Continental Divide between Alberta and British Columbia.
He was on a trip to field-test products and scale impressive icy routes with fellow North Face-sponsored alpinists Hansjörg Auer and David Lama of Austria. They also perished in the avalanche.
More than 700 people crammed into the Bing Crosby Theater for a memorial program to honor the affable Roskelley and grieve with a family that’s well-known and respected in the community. Those who had to be turned away dashed through the rain to Tamarack Public House where they could watch the KHQ livestream.
His family formed the Jess Roskelley Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes outdoor projects in the Spokane region (www.jessroskelleyfoundation.com).
His father, John Roskelley, had started young, too. His resume was already impressive when he dropped jaws in the international climbing world during the 1976 expedition that scaled the difficult northwest buttress of India’s Nanda Devi. And he was far from finished.
The next Jess Roskelley Foundation project fundraiser is being planned for Sept. 10 when John will be hosted by the Mountaineers of Seattle to present a BeWild speaker series video program he’s producing for the 50th anniversary of the Nanda Devi climb.
“We want to keep the memory of Jess alive and provide opportunities for kids to learn to climb and get outdoors,” John said in a recent interview.
John stands out as one of the world’s most accomplished professional high-altitude alpinists of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
He scaled back his climbing to win two elections for Spokane County commissioner starting in 1995, but continues to ply his impressive talents as a climber, author and watchdog over government and environmental affairs.
In 2007, he became the first climber to be inducted into the Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame.
In 2014, John received mountaineering’s prestigious international Lifetime Achievement Award at the Piolet d’Or in Chamonix, France.
Last year, he went to the Mazama area and climbed Goats Beard, the longest waterfall in the United States.
John teamed with Jess occasionally as the younger Roskelley’s notoriety for challenging technical routes was taking off.
In 2009, they bagged the difficult Slipstream ice climb in Jasper National Park after deteriorating conditions forced them to huddle in a frigid ice cave bivouac on a vertical cliff without sleeping bags – at minus-10 degrees.
“We just got caught out,” shrugged John, who was 60 at the time and Jess was 26. “These things happen occasionally when you climb challenging routes.”
Meanwhile, the attraction of climbing Mount Everest continues to grow. A single-day record of 274 climbers bagged the summit from the Nepal side on May 20, 2026.
At least five deaths have been confirmed this season.
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