A Climber We Lost: Spencer Dawes
Spencer Dawes, 25, September 17
You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2023 here.
Spencer Dawes died on September 17 while rappelling the Methow Inspiration Route (5.9) on Goat Wall in Okanogan, Washington. The young climbing guide’s friends shared stories of a peaceful, positive, “bodhisattva-like” individual—someone who was equally quick to crack a joke or lead a nerve-rattling rock pitch. Several of Dawes’s fellow guides—Brian Johnson, Victoria Garvin, Avery Stolte, and Ty Sauerbrey—gathered to share stories with Climbing, as did his mother, Debbie Dawes.
Raised in Athens, Alabama, Dawes was a keen outdoorsman and fisher from a young age, with a predilection for adventure. “Spencer was fearless,” Debbie said. “We spent a lot of time in the emergency room,” she added, laughing. His mother remembered how, at age 10, Dawes fell off his Razor scooter and broke both his arms. “Both arms were casted up to his shoulder, but he insisted on eating himself, not taking an inch of help!”
Dawes was also an extremely strong runner. He ran cross country competitively in high school and participated in a number of trail races, like the Mountain Mist 50K, after graduating. He began rock climbing in high school, first bouldering at local crags and gyms, and later roped climbing.
Dawes was an extremely bright young man, and he performed well in school, but was ultimately drawn to bigger adventures than a desk could provide. “Sitting in a classroom was beyond what Spencer could bear,” his mom joked. “He could not be still. It was difficult for him to do classes that didn’t mean anything to him.” Wilderness-medicine courses and climbing guide certifications, on the other hand, were a cinch for Dawes. “He breezed through any education in subjects he was passionate about,” Debbie said.
After a two-year stint at the University of North Alabama, in nearby Florence, Dawes dropped out and worked a series of odd jobs around the Athens-Huntsville area to finance his climbing. “Spencer worked so he could play,” Debbie explained. He interspersed work—most often at the local REI—with climbing trips to destinations like Red Rock, the Front Range of Colorado, Asheville, and Chattanooga, as well as a short stint on the Appalachian Trail.
Though he was a strong and motivated climber in all disciplines—particularly alpine, which was why he ultimately landed in the Cascades of Washington—if you asked Dawes about his long-term goals, he’d reveal that he wanted to be a physical education teacher. “Spencer was a funny guy,” said Sauerbrey, laughing. “He’d be like, ‘Man, I can’t wait to climb all my objectives and retire as a P.E. teacher!’ He was very fit. A beast. Hard to keep up with. So you’d crush whatever you were doing with him, and he’d have the biggest smile up top and be like, ‘Alright, I’m a little bit closer to teaching P.E.’”
Dawes was deeply philosophical, his friends said, with a knack for diving into profound topics seemingly at random. “You’d be sitting there, and he’d ask you your thoughts about reincarnation out of nowhere,” said Stolte.
Dawes wasn’t just curious about how others lived, though. He was open and happy to share his own beliefs, too. He regularly practiced Buddhist meditation and was convinced that he’d already lived several lives, and his belief in karmic cycles seemed to lead to a supernaturally mellow, peaceful disposition. “Spencer didn’t think there was any reason to be angry in life,” said Garvin. “He thought anger was life’s biggest waste of time and energy.”
Dawes may have had a monk’s heart, but he had a comedian’s tongue. Climbing with him was anything but dull, his friends said. “He was the funniest and most genuinely kind person I’ve ever met,” Garvin continued. “On a rope team, he was hilarious. He was the best person to guide with.” He regularly performed what he called “posture checks,” where he’d get on the walkie-talkie and call out a sarcastic “POSTURE CHECK!” making sure all the other guides and clients were standing up ramrod straight.
During one bad day on the mountain, Dawes got on the walkie-talkie to Garvin and called out, “Have you ever played ‘At Least It’s Not?’ Every time you start getting negative, you just say, ‘At least it’s not… and then you come up with something.’” She laughed. “It’d be about to downpour and Spencer would be on the walkie-talkie, ‘Well, at least it’s not raining yet guys!’”
Dawes had a long list of climbing objectives and goals, including returning to El Chaltén, where he’d climbed for two months in 2022 (taking part in the rescue of an injured climber), Denali, where he hoped to guide in 2024, and Yosemite, where he hoped to do the Nose (VI 5.9 C2; 3,000ft). But what Dawes enjoyed wasn’t really the climbs, Johnson said. “He just liked going out and having a good time with good people.”
His mother seconded this, noting that although her son had big goals, he was really already “living his dreams” as a climbing guide. “Seeing the beauty of the world, loving and supporting his family and friends, that’s what Spencer wanted from life,” Debbie said. “He was not someone who wanted a pat on the back for accomplishments. He wanted to make an impact. He told me all the time, ‘Mom, we aren’t promised tomorrow, you gotta live every day like it’s your last.’”
A week before his death, Dawes and Johnson summited Mt. Suart (9,415ft) via the Direct North Ridge (IV 5.9+; 2,800ft). “It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life,” Johnson said. Dawes looked back at his friend with faux solemnity as the pair racked up at the beginning of the climb. “Spencer goes, ‘Heavy are the hips that wear the rack,’” Johnson recalled, laughing. Dawes also took a “pretty bad” selfie at the base of the climb. “I was like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’” Johnson said, “And Spencer’s like ‘Oh man, I just want a selfie with this route!’”
“He was the most humble dude,” added friend Parker Weide, who met Dawes at a climbing gym in Alabama and later connected with him on the rock in Colorado. “Always stoked, always kind. Always made sure I got a fist bump before every climb.”
A devoted son, Dawes’s friends said that—even when living across the country and jammed into a hectic guiding schedule—he took the time to call his mother daily, without fail. Shortly after her son passed, Debbie flew out to Washington to spend a week with Dawes’s climbing friends and learn more about this side of her son’s life. “When I got out there and met them, I realized he’d found his tribe,” she said. “Every single one of them was just like him. It was incredible.”
Among a large and loving climbing family, including the names mentioned above, Spencer Dawes is survived by his best friends, Caleb Fisk and Jacob Holland, as well as his mother, his brother, Seth, and a large extended family. His father, Rick Dawes, had passed suddenly from brain cancer in late 2020, which his mother said may have contributed to Spencer’s final move out to Washington to “really live his dreams.”
In light of his peaceful Buddhist beliefs and the way in which he approached life, rain or shine, Dawes’s friends agreed that it was easy to believe he was nearing—or had reached—his final cycle of reincarnation, a hair’s breadth from nirvana. “He was the wisest person any of us has ever met,” Garvin said.
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