Climber Joe Puryear Dies on Mountain in Tibet

Former Mount Rainier National Park ranger Joe Puryear, noted for climbs in the Cascades, Alaska and around the world, has died in a fall on a remote mountain in Tibet.

Park spokesman Kevin Bacher said they were notified in an e-mail from former ranger Mike Gauthier who said he got a call early Wednesday describing the accident.

Bacher says Rainier's lead climbing ranger David Gottlieb was climbing with Puryear at the time.

Gauthier says Gottlieb found that Puryear broke through a cornice and died in a 1,500-foot fall on the 24,170-foot mountain, Labuche Kang.

The News Tribune of Tacoma reports Puryear lived in Leavenworth and is survived by his wife, Michelle. He was a Mount Rainier ranger in the 1990s.

The Seattle Times reported that after he left the National Park Service, Puryear wrote guidebooks and designed catalogs for outdoor gear companies. He recently won a prestigious climbing grant and learned how to network and get sponsors for big expeditions, such as the one he was undertaking in Tibet.

"He was an explorer," Mike Gauthier, former lead climbing ranger at Rainier who climbed with Puryear on Alaska's Mount McKinley in 1995, told the Seattle Times. "His idea of the dream was to be out in the most remote areas climbing new things."