"We only get one shot on this dustball..."

     Michael once told me he'd been soloing since early on, when he began in California (Tahquitz Rock) in the late 1980s — he'd simply hid it from his partners. For while you find a tremendous poetry in soloing, you also face a tremendous reality: if you fall, you die. And not all climbers react well to this, for only a few have soloed freely, without fear. Michael carried this power inside him every day, climbing more comfortably off the rope than on (I've belayed him — trust me). But he didn't just arrive at Romantic Warrior, either. Michael began in the late 1980s as a clueless sport-climbing n00b with a jellyroll, and a penchant for eye make-up left over from his heavy metal days. He’d head out to Joshua Tree for the weekend, provisioned only with canned ravioli and whiskey. Gradually, he morphed into a trad climber, boulderer, and soloist. Later, in the 1990s and 2000s, he became a dedicated athlete, throwing mountains and longer routes into the equation. He cultivated his mental game by following the same logical progression. His spiritual game, he alone can speak to.
     Michael willingly shared his craft and he knew the responsibility that came with that. His openness and choice to make a living at free soloing took persistence and courage, even exposing him to accusations of deceit… and sociopathically mean-spirited jabs by a club of largely Internet-based"Haters." I come from an era in which you took a fellow climber at his word — in the vertical world, there are no referees. Michael did his best to document his ascents and he climbed what he said he climbed. (His talent is indisputable; if you shared the rock with him, you know.)
     And for those who could stand comfortably by and appreciate his art, his dance and life energy exploded the prosaic. The list is long: the 5,000-foot days, whipping by in a maelstrom of denim (jeans) and red (cotton T-shirt) up the fingertip laybacks and rounded cracks of his beloved Joshua Tree quartz-monzonite. The blisteringly difficult ropeless forays up the lichen-splashed corners of California's otherworldly Needles, a beetling of haunted granite domes on a ridge high in the western Sierra. The marathon days at Tahquitz that might include a trip up the The Vampire, a razor-thin 5.11 not previously conceived of as a solo. And, of course, his pilgrimages to Ireland, where await lifetimes' worth of virgin rock, preserved bolt-free. It was literally impossible to wear Michael out, and if you climbed with Michael, you climbed till dark and you damned well tried your hardest.

“Soloing is a life wish, not a death wish.”

     Michael lived volumes in his 42 years. He scrapped by as a poor Yankee kid, slurping dandelion soup to stave off the hunger while he and his father lived out of their car. He partied like a Roman as a 1980s glam rocker, in the heavy metal band Rocks Milan (once evicted from Japan — yes, the whole country). He came onto the Hollywood scene as a music-video director, and then producer. He cracked the books as a Pepperdine University law student, and then entertainment-law consultant. He knuckled in as a climbing filmmaker and documentarian, of the free-soloing legacy of his friend and inspiration John Bachar. In the last two years, Michael worked on his movie Free Soloist, an epic voyage into his world and that of his heroes, through their words, psyches, and climbs. And he made up a third of a family unit so healthy and grounded that it provided a fertile ground in which to sow his talents.

     But these are just words, and words mean f—k all. If you climbed with Michael (perpetually a "Hollywood 29"), you lived Michael. He could be a loud, salty-tongued, opinionated son of a bitch — a rollicking Irishman jamming his obstinate opinion so far up your gob you didn't know whether to slap him or hug him. He pulsed with life energy so boundless that no one climbing partner could tire him, and getting a word in edgewise often felt impossible during those iPod-cranked-to-the-max drives to the crag. His pride in his climbing accomplishments could come across as arrogance, though at the heart of it, Michael only told you these things because he wanted you to climb better and to be there with him. He left panties and tubes of Vagisil strewn across the Palisade Traverse (VI 5.9) — a High Sierras' ridge-running orgy of 14,000-foot spires, coxcombs of granite, and endless talus slopes — to mark his ropeless passage, the first sub-24-hour ascent of the six-mile ridge. (Some saw this as a sacrilege.) He left plastic figurines of zoo animals on Romantic Warrior to do the same. With a friend, Wes Goulding, he climbed the Swiss Arete (II 5.7) of 14,153-foot Mount Sill in flip-flops, a blow-up doll piggybacked for the ride. He flipped the bird at the camera when he topped out... or sometimes on route. He cursed like a sailor. But his generosity and spirit, to those who came as friends, knew no limits.

“I often refer to my zone of concentration as the ‘eight-foot eggshell.’ It is the immediate area where my hands and feet lie. It is the concentration
of my focus. In this area, I have a choice of moving up or down, but everything outside of that area no longer matters.”

     During our first climbing trip together, to the Needles, Michael had to head off three hours early each morning to free solo, so he'd be properly worn out before we began the ol' hum-drum of roped climbing. But before he left, he made sure the French press was re-primed with coffee and the stove ready to go. He let me sleep in the biggest tent... on Marci's air mattress, with the softest pillow. He bought us a hamburger dinner and let me hang my fat ass all over his rope and gear. And he patiently listened to my whining on Ankles Away (5.11c), when, armed with only a double set of TCUs (the guidebook recommends a triple set of RPs, something Michael failed to mention), I set off into sickly-tips hell for a half-hour battle royale.
     Michael was a joker, too. He was the loudest guy in the room, drawing the attention, both negative and positive, that comes with that and his trademark mane of long blonde hair. (Memories of the two meth-eyed "Bubbas" in the Kernville taquería who glommed onto his presence and offered, chillingly, to lead us five miles up a dead-end road to a "1,000-foot cliff" still give me the shudders.) His voice boomed, and you knew the moment you picked up the phone to a throaty "Heeeeeeeey, brother!" that this could only be Michael ringing. He lived "Life without Limits," and as such, in a way magnified and became a magnet for the human condition. And he made friends wherever he went.
     At the ceremony held July 17 atop Dohilla, friends both Irish and American gathered to celebrate Michael’s life and return to Ireland. Partway in, Michael’s best friend Mark asked those of us who knew Michael to raise our hands. Maybe 20 or so did, and the other 130-odd people didn’t. But he’d brought them there anyway with that booming voice of his — literally, and figuratively through the riddle coded into the priceless photos of him soloing. Michael touched his countrymen in a way only an Irish hero can, and when a 17-year-old climber, Juan O’Raw, stood up to speak, we listened. Michael had spent the Thursday (and Friday morning) before he went missing at the Gap of Dunloe, with Juan and his fellow climbers from the Sleíthitorí ósa Ciarraí (Young Kerry Mountaineers), all of whom he'd met on a trip in January. In that unique Michael way, he'd quickly brought the boys into his extended family. Juan was touched — not only did he get to meet one of his legends, he'd shared the vertical plane and had a chance to watch Michael solo. In a climbing world sometimes poisoned by the shortcomings of man, Michael brought light. These boys figured that out quickly.

     Michael and I talked about a lot of things — the big stuff, the painful stuff. His operating theory was that “We only get one shot on this dustball," so he was going to do his thing while he was here — player haters and gravity be damned. And so he did. Some will see poetry or fate or even irony in the sea's taking him, but such forces bar easy analysis. A wave came and took Michael when it did, and none of us could do a damned thing. There are two other things Michael told me, though. Firstly, that he wasn't going to die climbing. And secondly, Ireland felt like home.
     Walk out to Dohilla, a place older than everyone you know... combined. Pick your way along the faint track through bent grasses, flakes of grey-black slate shuffled about like cards in sea meadows popping with flowers and herbs. Watch the Atlantic below, pushing in edge-of-the-galaxy blues against a coastline teeming with rock hewn square cut, forming massive headlands that loom over the raw waters. Feel the wind come in, pressing higher the waves and sculpting finger-perfect fissures, pockets, and hollows into the stone's serpentinite skin. Go pay Michael a visit. Sit in the sun and pick out all the lines he would have climbed, or ask a local to show you where he high-marked white chalk against the jet-black stone, the last traces of his unstoppable play: ropeless, high above the deep, noodling around on little edges in a way only he could. Visit him in this place of power: he's there and he's climbing, and I know he'd be glad to see you.

Matt Samet is the Editor of Climbing.


Michael Reardon’s Top Free Solos:
• Palisade Traverse (VI 5.9; onsight), High Sierra, California
• Romantic Warrior (V 5.12b; onsight), Sorcerer Needle, California.
• Sea of Tranquility (V 5.11+; onsight), Sorcerer Needle, California
• Shikata Ga Nai (IV sandbag 5.11+; onsight first ascent; 800 feet), Witch Needle, California
• EBGBs (5.10d), Joshua Tree National Park, California
• Equinox (5.12c), Joshua Tree National Park, California
• MRSR (5.12a first ascent), Joshua Tree National Park, California
• Tic-tic Boom (5.12b), Joshua Tree National Park, California
• The Pirate (5.12c), Suicide Rock, Idyllwild, California
• The Vampire (III 5.11a), Tahquitz Rock, Idyllwild, California
• Ghettoblaster (5.13b), Malibu Creek, California
• Jules Verne (first pitch, 5.11a; onsight), Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado
• Sunset Boulevard (5.11b/c; onsight), Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado