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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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Sorting gear;...Kyle Copeland, Todd Gordon Cyndie Bransford, Margie Floyd-Evans, Dave Evans...Moab, Utah...spring break
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Rest in Peace Kyle. Thanks for taking us around, putting us up and putting up with us.
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Ron, thanks so much for bringing Kyle up here in July. Kyle and I had never met before then. Although I wish I'd known him in his prime (and me in my prime, as well, so we could have climbed together), it was good to just spend some time in his presence.
Ka, your brother was obviously a special human being. My thoughts go out to you and your family, and all of Kyle's many friends.
-Jeff Lowe
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Russ Walling
Gym climber
Poofter's Froth, Wyoming
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RIP Kyle.... sincere condolences and best wishes to your friends and family.
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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Another brother gone. Best wishes and condolences to his family and what I'm sure is a vast array of friends. Off belay, Kyle.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Another heart rending loss. At least he is now at peace.
My condolences to family and friends.
He was well deserved of the status he attained.
He will be sorely missed by many.
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Jack Burns
climber
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Thanks for all the routes, Kyle.
Sincerest condolences to Ka, family and friends.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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My condolences to friends and family.
Climbs to Nowhere...classic. Sorry for the hasty and poor photo.
What a legacy, especially in the desert around Moab.
-Brian in SLC
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cyndiebransford
climber
31 years in Joshua Tree, now Alaska
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Good bye Kyle. May peace be with you and those you leave behind.
I will always think of Kyle when I visit Moab. He was generous with his climbing knowledge and welcomed us each spring break.
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Gagner
climber
Boulder
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RIP Kyle - while we never climbed together, for many years we always seemed to run into each other somewhere in the desert. Condolences to Kyle's family.
Paul
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maldaly
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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RIP Kyle. Many thanks for all the routes you showed us and spires you climbed. I'm glad we got a few minutes together in July at Jello's house.
Best,
Mal
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unimog
climber
windy corner in the west
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may you rest in peace my friend you will be missed and always remembered
my best to your family
Sasha
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wayne w
Trad climber
the nw
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Very sad news. Kyle really was a great person, as well as a great climber.
Only got to meet him once, in '94 at his house in Moab when we were there to do an ascent of Primose on Moses. He lent us a couple of cams in sizes we didn't have he thought we'd need. His legacy will live on proudly...
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shellon copeland
Boulder climber
reston, virginia
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Kyle was my older brother. I googled him to look at climbing pictures of him and saw your postings. He found a great family with you guys and climbing. He was always so long and skinny he could climb anything and was like a frenetic ball of energy which is such a great gift but can sometimes not fit well with mind numbing school classes and working in an office. He was so perfectly Yin and Yang, he paid his dues in the last 10 years and has reached nirvana. He earned it. I think going through surgeries and ER visits are equal to extreme climbing with the physical and emotional stress that goes with those. My parents have not decided what to do but maybe there could be like a gathering of climbers and family/friends where he loved to be so much in Moab. It is really soon but will post if we get that together.
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wbw
climber
'cross the great divide
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Thanks Kyle, for the jams and the floorspace back in the day. Thanks for letting me goof off on your pedal steel. Thanks for the beta, especially on Zenyatta Entrada. Thanks for introducing me to the continuous flow of unique characters that seemed to pass through your house in Moab. Thanks for the stories and inspiration. You were one of a kind.
If you see them around, give an 'eh up to Derek and Charlie.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Ka, thanks for posting this here. Sorry for your loss. Kyle was a desert climbing icon.
Kyle moved to Moab back before it was trendy, happily put up with all kinds of visitors camping in and around his house, and put up many great climbs around Moab. He was an artist. He used to work on some rock polishing projects, including making lampshades, as I recall, out of thin-sliced stone--beautiful.
Sadly, like many of us, my memories of Kyle are now two decades old. Back then, he was always willing to share his house and his love of the desert. He could and should have been an active member and driving force in the current Moab/desert climbing community, but as his health issues became more challenging, he gradually kept more to himself, not wanting to burden his friends.
Had his body stayed strong, what might have been?
RIP Kyle.
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bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA
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Kyle's design for crack climbing gloves (Spider Mitts) was the best! RIP Kyle.
Bruce
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Gilwad
climber
Frozen In Somewhere
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I worked with Kyle way back in the day at Jrat, did a few climbs that stuck in my mind more than usual with him, and generally enjoyed the Kyle space. Good memories. I hadn't seen him in a bunch of years but sent a small care package to the hospital he was in, hope he got a laugh, I had fun sending it.
Peace to his family and friends.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I did not know him but condolences to his family and many friends.
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DJMac
Big Wall climber
Bonedale, CO
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This is very sad news indeed. My heart goes out to friends and family!
I have too many memories of Kyle to list. Many amazing, adventurous, crazy, wet, cold, hot, drunk, stoned and sober, angry and sad, humorous and not so humorous times. Kyle was and extraordinary man living in a crazy world. He was so good at so many things, and IMO a true climbing underdog.
I know my climbing days would not have been the same without him. Wait, can I hear him cracking the whip and saying, "get moving up there"?
***
It’s a freezing cold and snowy morning in Boulder, sitting in the living room sipping on a hot cup of Chock Full o'Nuts (his favorite coffee at the time). The "Spud Club" is in session and Kyle wants to go out and AID CLIMB some new line up Boulder Canyon. The Spud Club responds with a cool "WTF? Are you kidding?" I naively say, "OK, I'll go".
Hours later I'm sitting in waist deep snow, inside a haul bag, freezing my butt off while he works his magic aid on a dark and dirty roof crack. My hands and feet are numb. I dedicated this moment with a cartoon. Cam Head "Missing Partner". I don't even think this climb is recorded anywhere.
***
I'm following and cleaning [on aid] the short diagonal crack pitch on D7 (The Diamond, RMNP) just before table ledge. It's dark, raining and snowing, very cold. Above me a headlamp peaks over the edge and Kyle’s voice whispers from above "hey man, do you think you can free climb the rest of the way up without falling?" I think and say, "uh ... OK ... I'll try."
When I safely get up to the ledge Kyle is sitting next to a huge VW sized boulder perched on the ledge with a big sling over it. Kyle says, "Sorry man ... I'm really sorry. I can't believe I didn't check this." He leans over past me and puts his hands on the block and rocks it back and forth. It booms and sounds like death. The way it's tied off, with the jug line, and Kyle attached ... we all would have bit the big one if anything had happened. We spent one of the most heinous nights I've ever had on a wall crammed behind and around that huge block. It wanted to jump off the wall so badly I could feel it tugging at us as we tried to sleep in our saturated bags. It was a long night. We made it to the summit early the next morning.
***
Sitting in a horizontal cave-like hueco the size of a minivan high up on a South Platte Dome. The view is cloudy and rainy outside. Inside the huge hueco there are features. A small grotto, a hueco with a single crystal protruding from its base like a religious symbol and a small man-size cave in the back. We hang out, smoke down, smoke up, chat, crawl into the man-size hole, take pictures, smoke more. It’s so very cool. Such an amazing place to be.
It’s my lead. I start looking around for the next unknown pitch. Not knowing what is above me. I start traversing out the side of the cave and not seeing an obvious line I keep traversing.
I see a ledge off to my side. A big boulder sits on the ledge … and tools. Tools? There’s a shovel, a pick and some other relics. That’s weird, I think. So I keep traversing to the ledge and as I move further I see a cave. A huge cave! This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
I call back to Kyle and Mark, “You guys have to come over here and see this!”
When we’re all on the ledge together we look at the tools and there are huge black quartz crystals lying around. Some are the size of my forearm. We explore the cave and find many more black quartz crystals.
We spent hours here, looking around in the dirt, digging up crystals, smoking down, smoking up, chatting and laughing.
It’s almost dark and we’ve got to get off here. We didn’t bother to do a last pitch, not enough time, too much fun on the ledge. Time to rap off with a Bag Full o’Crystals!
***
KC … we miss you man!
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