Wyoming guide, whose father died on the Grand Teton, presumed dead on Nepali peak

Talented Wyoming guide Michael Gardner who cultivated his world-class mountain climbing skills in the Tetons is missing on a Himalayan peak and presumed dead. Gardner’s father, also a legendary climber, died in a fall from the Grand Teton in 2008.

Gardner fell while attempting a climb of Jannu East, a 24,501-foot high peak in eastern Nepal earlier this week, according to alpine news sites, friends and employers. A French team retreating from the north face of the unclimbed peak saw Gardner’s partner, Sam Hennessey, alone on the face and waving on Monday, Explorersweb and AlpineMag reported.

Hennessey told the French climbers that Gardner had fallen, the news outlets reported. The three Frenchmen and Hennessey then rappelled 2,300 feet to the bottom of the face together where they found pieces of clothing but no sign of Gardner.

Gardner, 32, lost his father, a guide with Exum Mountain Guides, in an accident on the Grand Teton in 2008. George Gardner of Ridgway, Colorado, was 58 when he set off to climb the Lower Exum Ridge alone without a rope.

Searchers found his body the next day. The cause of his fatal fall remains unknown.

Michael Gardner was 16 at the time, but his father’s death didn’t deter him from climbing and skiing in the mountains and he, too, became an Exum mountain guide. “His guiding apprenticeship began informally, with his first mountaineering trips at age eight, with his father and saw him become one of the youngest guides in the United States,” his biography at the Exum Mountain Guides site states.