Goodbye Uéli. – Will Gadd – athlete, speaker, guide

Date: May 1, 2017

Oh shit, Ueli. I’m really sorry you didn’t make it. The last time I saw you, we walked and climbed here in Canmore, then you climbed the mountains I look at now with the demons of your last trip to Everest screaming at your heels. I could see the tension in your eyes and the sharpness of your movements, and it was clear that you felt a terrible burden. It was a measure of your character that you cared so deeply, always… In time you moved on, but when I heard the news from Everest today, I knew that the demons had caught you. They’ll catch up to all of us eventually, but damn, I wish you’d stayed out front longer. In an age where athletes define their own “accomplishments” on Instagram and constantly talk about self-imposed “hardships and pain,” this is not the case. You climbed, you loved it, and you thought long and hard about the mountain game. The suffering was not because it fell short of the goal. To achieve big dreams, you need big goals. You lived your dreams better than anyone I’ve ever known.

I can’t stop crying as I write this. I cry for the excited but slightly chubby kid who drives us all in a crappy car up the cliff with a trunk that didn’t work. For the guy who got up before us and ran to the local bakery to get two fresh pastries for everyone but himself. Who would imitate me when we looked at a ridiculous route and said, “Easy, easy, Red Bull, easy, easy, heh heh!” Who spent hours and hours getting me Snus from Norwegian snowboarders when I ran out and threatened to throw me off the balcony of his house unless I found some. Who shared his house, his hearth and his love when I lived there for months and we competed in the first Ice World Cup. Who climbed two of the routes I failed on after showing him the photos, winning a Piolet D’Or for one of them. And then I had the courage to write myself an email starting with “Greetings from Nepal”. How is the father of the family? Simon and I have just returned to Katmadou. we were on Tengkampoch to acclimatize to the Annapurna Southface. We climbed your line on the north face of Tengkampoche, it was…. nice climb. Steck’s warm-up climb earned him a Piolet D’or.

Ueli was a good man before and after becoming the Swiss Machine. When he was 19, I could see his ambition and drive, but he wasn’t that fast on approaches and there were a lot of climbers who were technically better than him. It’s the truth. His athletic performance today puts him in the “He’s a machine, so I can never be like him” category for most. In reality, the truth is much greater and more important in the lesson it brings to our own lives: He transformed himself into a machine. He busted his ass harder than anyone I know. Yes, genetics played a role in the altitude, but his genetics had to be that of a cherub or perhaps a hockey player like his brothers, not a ripped machine screaming in the ozone. None of us have any excuse for being lazy or selling ourselves short based on what we think we can’t be. You taught me that Ueli, and much more. Ueli’s climbing was great, but I remember those little pulpits of pure Steck where he would take a playful side, make fun of himself, or dig deep into an intellectual idea just to understand it. He taught me how a bomb shelter worked and how to find hardware in Switzerland when we built proto-ice equipment together. It was pure pleasure. Just like drytooling in the pouring rain on an obscure Swiss rock. I didn’t want to train in the rain, he didn’t see a problem with that. It wasn’t pain, it was a step towards a goal, no problem.

At the end of your last trip and visit here to Canada, you left us a cheap spatula and a few other items to reduce weight before heading home. I kept it and continued to use the spatula because I liked the way it reminded me of you. A cheap, ephemeral plastic thing from a mentally rich, self-made human somehow fits and always made me smile when I was flipping an egg for my kids or friends. We joked about it, the official Steck spatula and frying pan. You wanted to camp with your wife and enjoy the mountain feel even though you could afford any hotel you wanted, and you also wanted to make my little basement room with this terrible bed your home. I think that says a lot about you: that you always choose the mountains and the people over everything else.

I loved our climbs and our time in the mountains together (I remember the way you vibrated with energy before starting a big high ice route a few years ago, it was awesome!), but I ‘really wish we had shared a few more dinners back where you started. I started eating only vegetables, then broke and opted for the greasy meat platter with wild abandon. I had a few more glasses of wine, diet be damned. In the end, your English was excellent, but I will always remember that wonderful Swiss voice that tried to follow the ideas and sparks that flowed from your eyes 20 years ago. It was magic, and you certainly had a lot of it.

Oh shit, I wish everything was different amigo, that we were farmers in the Bernese Oberland 100 years ago, and that we and all our friends were dying of old age, and that we could chew grass stalks together toothless in the evening sun and smile among the big cows. But that’s not the case, and I’m sorry for your well-deserved family and network of friends around the world. We chose a different path, and today your death makes me question my own path through tears. I will think of you while walking in the woods or turning over an egg, and I will stamp my feet a little more firmly in the mountains.
Goodbye and thank you Ueli.

PS–There are many detailed obituaries for those who want to know more. I like this one from Ed Douglas.

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