A Climber We Lost: Johnny Goicoechea

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

In early September, the climbing community learned of the passing of Johnny Goicoechea, a.k.a. “Johnny G,” a prolific climber and boulderer who established some of Washington and Colorado’s hardest and best routes and boulder problems from the early 2000s through mid-2010s. Johnny G had become something of a living legend, an enigma; social media was flooded with comments mourning Johnny’s loss, recounting memories and impressions, and testifying to Johnny’s influence on the climbing scenes he touched.

For Johnny’s close friends, the emotions around Johnny’s passing were complicated. Johnny had actually died in April—some five months prior—and we hadn’t even known. Many of us had fallen out of touch with him and, for a few years, had only passing glimpses into his life. A text around the holidays, a quick call once a year. Something had changed, but those brief messages had allowed us to believe that Johnny was essentially the same, sending positive wishes and sharing psyche, wanting to talk about anything but himself. Now… dead? Johnny? Really??

Born in Spokane Washington in 1983, Johnny grew up the middle child in a comfortable middle class family. Johnny’s father, David, was a solo practitioner lawyer; his mother, Marcia, worked in the law office. The family lived on a hillside overlooking the city, mirroring the heritage of Johnny’s Basque name—the pre-anglicized version of which, Goikoetxea, means “house on the hill.”

After a day of top-roping in Boise during junior high, Johnny asked his mother to take him to Wild Walls, the then-brand-new Spokane climbing gym. Like most of us, he was hooked immediately. “He went in, this little redheaded kid, and everybody there was just so kind and good to him,” says Marcia.

Johnny was a shy, unassuming, and—at the time—slight kid, but his raw talent immediately coupled with an obsessive drive, and off he went. Johnny climbed and trained seven days a week, joining the youth team and competing in the PNW youth comp circuit. He cut his outdoor bouldering teeth on the old-school Spokane granite of Minnehaha and at nearby Tum Tum. Clark Shelk, founder of the iconic crash pad brands Cordless and Revolution, first met a pre-teen Johnny in Oregon and was impressed by his psych.

“At one point in his early climbing years, he was trying to train one-finger campus moves,” Shelk told me. “He ended up ripping tendons in both of his arms, but he just rested for a few weeks and kept on climbing.”

Johnny received an early education in sport climbing when Marty Bland, a legendary Inland Northwest developer and guidebook author, took him under his wing. Johnny climbed 5.14 as a teenager in the early 2000s—well before the Ondra and Ashima era—and left his mark on the local crags with the first ascents of Problem Child (5.14c) in Deep Creek and The Maddening aka Power Tube (5.14b) across the state line in Riggins, Idaho.

“There were a lot of great climbers back in those days. But in the Northwest, there really was only one who was better than the rest,” notes Tyson Schoene, the venerable Vertical World Climbing Team coach who has mentored elite youth climbers for two decades. Yet Johnny preferred to fly under the radar, as he would over the course of his climbing life. As Schoene puts it, “Johnny was sweet, encouraging, and perpetually psyched. He wore it on his sleeve.”

At the tail end of a sport climbing trip to Rifle in 2003, Johnny visited Rocky Mountain National Park. The wide open spaces and world-class bouldering potential lured him in. He couch surfed with Rob D’Anastasio and Mike Feinberg, friends from the junior competition circuit, and then moved to Boulder later that year, attending Front Range Community College and working for Christian Griffith at Verve. Johnny explored and developed climbs in Boulder Canyon, the Poudre, the Flatirons, and Eldorado Canyon with his comp-crusher roommates and others, like Brian Solano, Lee Payne, Chad Greedy, Harry Robertson, and Tim Kemple.

“Nobody was quite as jacked as Johnny,” Rob D’Anastasio told me. “But one of his greater abilities was persevering through some scary stuff, and maybe even being a little afraid, but wanting to do it bad enough that he would just persevere.”

Johnny repeated many of the Front Range’s established double-digit problems and put up his own testpieces. Some, like Cage Free (V11) and Kicking Puppies (V12) in Boulder Canyon, and Veritas Sit (V11) in Rocky Mountain National Park, remain modern classics, while many others, like One Man Army (V9) in the Poudre, Chronic Blaze Celebration Arete (V10) in the Flatirons, and Wild Style (V12) at Mount Blue Sky, are stout obscurities.

When we abandon the vertical path, not all of us are lucky enough to find a new kind of fulfillment in family, a career, a mountain bike, or a surf break. The climbing map has an edge—beyond it, there be dragons.

Though self-promotion was anathema to Johnny, he amassed an impressive list of sponsors, including 5.10, Revolution, Verve, Fortress Watches, and Asana. And despite spending more time outside than in the gym, he took fifth in the 2004 ABS Nationals, sixth in the 2009 ABS Nationals, and made finals in countless local and regional comps. Johnny also traveled extensively. In Bishop, he flashed The Buttermilker (V12) and climbed The Mandala Sit (V13/14). In Font, he climbed Fata Morgana Bas (8B/V13) and many other climbs in the eighth grade in a one-week trip—one of the first times he’d even climbed on sandstone.

I first met Johnny in 2007, when he moved back to Washington. We had a number of mutual friends, and I helped him get a job at the historic Stone Gardens gym in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. I had long known of Johnny from his early Leavenworth first ascents—climbs like WAS (V8), The Sail (V9), and Goicoechea (V9/10), a crimpy roof that was ahead of its time locally when he did the FA in high school with junior comp buddies Cole Allen and Dmitry Kalashnikov. Johnny’s talent and raw strength was the stuff of legend, and his stylish Revolution ads (to this day, has any other climber earned a two-page photo spread featuring a photo of them merely brushing a boulder?) were intimidating. I expected to find in him a 1980s Bachar ego, but instead I found a dirtbag Alfred E. Newman: humble, low-key, and seemingly unable to spray.

We moved into a climber flophouse in Seattle’s Pinehurst neighborhood with Joel Campbell, a strong Washington developer, and Jeff Parmenter, another 5.14 Colorado transplant. Though we had a roof over our heads and jobs setting routes, those were dirtbag days: Couch-surfers were ever-present, the hot tub that had initially seemed the peak of luxury quickly became a biohazard, and—to borrow the inimitable line from Dumb and Dumber—“the beer flowed like wine.”

In those halcyon years, Johnny climbed everything, full stop. Listing Johnny’s accomplishments in Washington in the 2000s and early 2010s would double the word count of this piece, but even a short recap of his highlights reads like a list of Washington’s five-star boulder problems. In Index, Johnny did the first ascents of Chutzpah (V11), All of the Above (V12), and Hagakure Low (V13 pre-alteration). In Gold Bar, Johnny established The Stinger (V12), Doja Direct (V11), The Gauntlet (V11), and J Boogie (V11). He also brought new tactics and strategies to climbs like The Gorilla’s Nest (V10/5.13?), a 45-foot “two-pitch” boulder problem that climbed through a halfway-point “deck” Johnny built around the trunk of a large Douglas Fir that was snagged on the boulder. The problem was still unrepeated when the old tree finally slid off the boulder a few years ago, taking the deck with it.

In Leavenworth, Johnny did the FAs of many of the best and hardest climbs, including Turbulence (V12), Tornado Arete (V12), The Saber (V11), Wildfire (V11/12), Cloaca (V11), Thunderdome Low (V11, flash), The Cougarmilker (V11), Nine Iron (V10), and many more. In 2014, when I was writing my second guidebook to Leavenworth, I realized that nearly all of the projects listed in my 2007 guide had been climbed by Johnny—and that Johnny had found and cleaned most of the new projects listed in the 2014 book.

Despite his successes and clear prominence, Johnny always preferred to fly under the radar. Jeff Parmenter, our roommate in the Pinehurst house, says “It was almost like Johnny was sheepish, like he was uncomfortable with the attention he got for being so strong.”

Johnny was almost self-conscious about his accomplishments and graded his problems only reluctantly. While trying to get grades for Johnny’s FAs for my 2014 guide, I resorted to hostage-style tactics, throwing out numbers and testing his reaction, à la “blink twice if you need help…”

“Do you think it’s V10?”

“Aww man, I dunno.”

“V11?”

“Ahh, dude, I really don’t know.”

“V12?”

“Uh, like, I’m not sure man. Maybe?”

V12 it was.

Though Johnny was only five foot ten or so and not a “big” guy, he had a natural, animalistic strength that seemed to manifest directly from his mind. When he pulled onto the rock, his shoulders doubled in size; when he tried hard, they tripled. A spot from Johnny felt like it took two grades off a problem—and if it was still too hard, he’d be there to snatch you out of the air. When my then-girlfriend, now-wife Cortney Cusack came winging headfirst off the topout of the 18-foot Great Zimbabwe Walls (V3) in Index, Johnny plucked her from the air, turned her right-side-up in a single fluid motion, and set her down on the pads feet-first, grinning sheepishly.

Johnny also had a hilarious, gonzo sense of humor he’d maintain at a low simmer, letting it burst out in surprising—and seemingly random—moments. When Johnny impressively flashed the FA of an unacceptably risky 25-foot project over a cluster of jagged talus in Leavenworth, he waited until late at the campfire that night to solemnly announce that he would name the problem Big Happy or Legs Go Snappy (V10). A short while later, a toprope anchor appeared atop a longstanding highball project. Incensed, Johnny put in an hour of ground-up effort, bouldered it the same day, and called it No Strings Attached (V10). When Seattle had a freak three-foot snowstorm, Johnny erected an elaborate snow sculpture of a man and woman in flagrante delicto on the hood of our housemate’s car. Laughing, incredulous at the effort, we asked him why. He just giggled, smiled, and giggled some more.

But Johnny was not immune to the harder side of the climbing life. He was not above trash-talking around a campfire, or knowingly poking fun at climbers who didn’t know their place and had an exaggerated sense of their own abilities and significance. The one thing Johnny could not countenance was disrespect to the stone: ethical violations and “aggressive cleaning.” One of my strongest climbing memories is bearing witness to a rare flash of Johnny’s rage. In 2016, we went to a project in Leavenworth that would later become Ragged Lion (V11) with Dmitry Kalashnikov. The problem climbs out a 50-degree roof on uncharacteristically friable granite, following what would be a pumpy 5.9 layback seam if it were on a vertical wall. When we arrived, we found that, in the few weeks since Johnny had last tried it, someone had hacked away at a sandy lump on the face next to the crack, creating a chunky one-pad edge in the middle of the crux. Johnny stacked pads and felt the edge. His jawline started to bulge and his face turned red. He clenched and unclenced his fists, turning in small circles. Kalashnikov and I sat in silence—half in reverence and half in dread. After a minute, I picked a softball-sized rock off the ground, looked Johnny in the eye, and handed it to him. With three quick strikes, Johnny obliterated the manufactured hold. He dropped the rock, picked up his pad, and walked away.

Joel Campbell, who had the bedroom next to Johnny in our Pinehurst house, recalls overhearing Johnny reciting to himself almost every morning, slowly and deliberately: “Today. Is going to be. A. Good. Day.” His positivity was not only boundless, but also intentional. I could never tell whether Johnny’s unflinching kindness and good nature were the product of a deep shyness or a deliberate effort to beat back the tide of negativity, responsibility, a changing climbing world, city life—all of it.

In the mid 2010s, Johnny’s body finally began to slow him down. An old rotator cuff injury worsened, and he traded the taxing and underpaid life of routesetting for the equally taxing but slightly better-compensated life of construction. He worked for a high-end local homebuilder and transitioned into a coaching role at the gym. As a coach, Johnny’s selfless enthusiasm and pure passion for climbing shone through. “I used to train our kids to climb like Johnny. He was the example,” says Schoene. “And later when he started coaching, I saw him instill all that into the kids he worked with. Those who were lucky enough to be coached by him will never forget it. And are better because of him.”

The final chapter of Johnny’s story is not a happy one. Johnny moved to San Diego in 2015 to care for his mother, who had fallen ill. While there, his shoulder injury worsened, and without health insurance, his treatment options were limited. He coached at a local gym, but he wasn’t climbing any more. Already notoriously reticent, Johnny fell out of touch with our Washington crew, and our visibility into his life narrowed to phone calls once or twice a year. A series of random injuries derailed him further, including a strange rash that spread over most of his body and required him to be hospitalized for a week. We had all partied hard in our 20s, but Johnny hinted that he was drinking more, perhaps a lot more. A longstanding tendency toward depression—the wellspring of Johnny’s humble and gentle nature—that had been present before Johnny left Washington seemed to have reared its head. His truck was stolen and totaled. Without car insurance Johnny’s only form of transportation was his bike. He left coaching and construction and started working in a restaurant kitchen.

When I talked to Johnny’s mother Marcia in October—five months after Johnny’s death—she told me that Johnny had suffered a significant head injury working in California, which none of us in Washington had known about. His mental health deteriorated rapidly. Marcia took him to doctors a few times before her own health issues prevented her from forcing him to go, and then he simply stopped going. Brain injuries change people, she explained. “It was not a good situation for any of us.”

Johnny passed away after a long battle with his illness and its repercussions in April 2024.

The flash-flood of social media posts following news of Johnny’s passing is a testament to his gentle-giant stature in the Colorado and Washington climbing scenes. One commenter posted “he was kind and friendly to me when I was a goofy 18 year old obsessed with bouldering.” Another noted Johnny was “so humble and kind to everyone no matter their level.” Yet another noted that Johnny “always talked to me like an equal and would invite me out to climb with him and his crew even though I’d be projecting his warmups.” There were hundreds of similar comments, many from people that might have only known Johnny briefly yet had experienced a genuine connection with him.

“I always assumed we’d run into each other, and it would be like we never missed a beat,” Rob D’Anastasio told me. It was the same for many in the Washington climbing community. If Johnny had a support network in California, it wasn’t apparent. The last contact I received from Johnny was a text he sent my wife and I in late 2022 wishing us happy holidays. We called him back, but he didn’t answer. Others were better about trying to keep in touch, but no one talked to Johnny more than once or twice a year.

If there’s a moral here, it’s that the runway at the end of the high-flying climbing life is particularly rocky. I know a few pathologically-psyched climbers that are still going in their 50s, 60s and 70s, but I can count them on two now-uncalloused hands. When we abandon the vertical path, not all of us are lucky enough to find a new kind of fulfillment in family, a career, a mountain bike, or a surf break. The climbing map has an edge—beyond it, there be dragons.

I wrote this piece partly as an act of closure, as selfish as that is; Johnny would have been uncomfortable with the idea of an article shining the spotlight on him. But I also wrote this to say the things I should have said to Johnny and about Johnny over the last decade. Keep your friends close, and say those things before it’s too late. Don’t save your expressions of deep appreciation for the RIP social media post or the too-long obituary—tell your friends they are important to you and take care of each other. It’s what Johnny would want us all to do.

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

Kelly Sheridan is an attorney in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of Central Washington Bouldering (2007) and Leavenworth Bouldering (2014, updated 2024), both published by Sharp End Books.