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.
