Monday, April 25, 2011

Greg Seftick Memorial Highight Reel

This past week one of my greatest climbing partners and good friend Greg Seftick passed away in an avalanche in Garnet Canyon near the Grand Teton with his climbing partner Walker Kuhl. The details are here.

After I moved to Montana in 2004, Greg made routine visits to climb mountains, rocks, and ice with me. I loved photographing our adventures, and Greg got to be the climbing model a lot. Most of the time our climbing partnership would be me leading up to some crux move, I'd state the dubiousness of the situation, Greg knowing full well he wasn't going to pull the move would tell me that "a top notch alpinist and climbing coach like myself" (which was a lie) should be able to get through the difficulties, I'd then turn back at the rock, tell him he was crazy, think about it again, and pull the move and get us to the belay.

Multi day routes were great with him. He was a portable talk radio built for the mountains. His stories were crazy, humorous, and endless.

What follows below are some of the best climbing photos I have of Greg. Many are re-posts but it's worth it to see them collected again. See you on the other side of the mountain Greg.

4 comments:

Beez said...

Touching tribute Joel.

Heather said...

Thanks for sharing this. Greg and I were med school friends and classmates. He was such a great guy and always had a funny running commentary regarding whatever ridiculous things we encountered throughout school. RIP Greg.

Andy said...

I also met Greg during medical school. He was the easiest person to get to know and loved to share his experiences with everyone. He was an extremely positive and kind-hearted individual. When he was on his internal medicine clerkship, he loved to get to know his patients and cared deeply for them. He balanced his interest in medicine and his lust for life wonderfully, and he had friends everywhere. God bless you Greg; I'll miss you.

Lisa D. RN said...

I met Greg when he came to work in our ED in rural WV. Sometimes night shift in the emergency department can be long...but he told us quite a few stories...some about climbing, some about skiing, some about being lost, sometimes just doing South Park episodes verbatim! :) He was great! He cared about his patients, he cared about his friends....It's a shame the world is going to have to do without this man, both as a doctor and as a person....a friend. RIP Greg...we are sure gonna miss you.