BURSTKevin Cooper, the Colorado climber known for his bold ice and mixed climbing first ascents, is facing a long and painful recovery after a scaffolding accident left him with multiple severe injuries, including broken ribs, vertebrae fractures, and head trauma. As medical expenses mount, Cooper could use the climbing community’s support.
Cooper’s Facebook post from Dec. 10 shows him lying in a hospital bed with tubes in his nose, an IV in his arm, and an exhausted expression on his face. His post read:
“Five broken ribs, some vertebrae chips, transverse fractures of two vertebrae, lung contusions, concussion, head contusion, and a broken toe. And my shoulder is pretty sore.”
Though his insurance covers much of the hospital fees, the bills are piling up, and he’ll have to pay a significant amount out of pocket. Adding to the strain, Cooper won’t be able to work for months as he recovers.
“I’m still in the hospital. Looks like I’m gonna have to spend another night here,” he tells me from United Healthcare in Loveland, Colorado.
His wife, Shelly, and their two daughters, Névé and Corinne, are by his side as he begins the long road to recovery. Donations can be made through this GoFundMe to support Cooper during his recovery. Every contribution will help with medical expenses and ongoing recovery costs.
A renowned climber, Cooper has climbed El Cap 16 times, with routes up to A5, established thin, bold mixed and ice routes up to WI6 X like Cannonball on Longs Peak, and made the legendary first ascent of the 4,000-foot WI4 AI5+ M6 A1 Stairway to Heaven on Mt. Johnson in Denali National Park, Alaska.
On the day of the scaffolding accident, Dec. 10, he had been working as a framer and finish carpenter. He was installing tongue-and-groove wood (a type of woodworking joint where one piece has a protruding edge that fits into a corresponding groove on another piece) on a ceiling, working two flights up. He had a plank leaning off the scaffolding onto a ladder as a makeshift bridge to navigate the space more easily. His bridge shifted under his weight, and the plank gave way.
As he was falling, “I guess I tried to grab the other plank below me, and it just flipped me right onto my head,” he tells me from the hospital.
“I’ve been having a pretty major headache all day today,” he says in a groggy voice, adding that he’d just woken up. “Yesterday it wasn’t as bad, but it’s pretty bad today. I slammed my head pretty hard. I fell onto the subfloor, the plywood floor, basically. Luckily, it wasn’t concrete—it could have been a lot worse. The plywood had a little flex to it.”
The Allenspark, Colorado, resident was knocked out cold. Once he woke up, some friends from work loaded him into their car and took him to the emergency room.
Despite being in pain and suffering from a constant headache, his family is by his side, helping him as much as they can. “My wife and daughters have been down to visit, and some of the crew I was working with yesterday came down this morning. So yeah, I feel like I’m in good hands. Definitely.”
With his severe injuries and a long recovery ahead, Cooper won’t be able to work for at least a few months. Of course, he also had to cancel his climbing plans. “I was supposed to go down to Lake City, Colorado, this weekend and climb some ice, but that ain’t gonna happen now. The town’s been farming ice on these cliffs right outside of town, from 100 to about 180 feet.”
To read a story I wrote about Cooper in Gripped in 2018, check out this link.
Cooper grew up in San Lorenzo, California, spending his youth side-country skiing in the Sierra with his parents, younger brother Paul, and older sister Julie. During those early years, he fell in love with the mountains. In 1990, he began alpine climbing with Paul, and they did the Exum Ridge on the Grand Teton.
In addition to his free and aid climbing skills, Cooper is one of Colorado’s top alpine climbers. Residing just four miles from The Diamond on Longs Peak (14,259 feet) in Rocky Mountain National Park, his backyard is a climber’s dream—offering 14ers to rock climb in the summer and sketchy alpine routes to test his tools in the winter. He’s climbed the Diamond—a face so tall it’s often regarded as the El Cap of Colorado—more than 30 times, established two new routes on its lower wall, climbed it in winter, and even skied down its north face.
This season in RMNP, Cooper has ventured into the alpine several times despite lean ice conditions. On Nov. 18, he posted images of mixed climbing near his home, writing, “Scrappy day in the park!” of the route All Mixed Up on the 12,668-foot Thatchtop Mountain.
Longs Peak | Window Pain
In 2013, Cooper and Topher Donahue made the first ascent of the ice smear Window Pain (WI6+) that tops out at over 14,000 feet on Longs Peak. To reach the new terrain, they climbed six existing pitches of M6 up to WI5 on the lower-east face of the mountain. The crux of the route—a narrow, window-pane-width strip of ice 200 feet long on The Diamond—was at the limit of what they thought possible. Donahue wrote that Cooper “put together everything he’d learned in 20 years of unadulterated ice-fiend behavior for a lead neither of us will ever forget.”
After the route, while rappelling on V-threads as the sun crested over the Rockies, the team descended and reached the bottom “just as darkness engulfed the cirque in pitchy blackness,” wrote Donahue.
A few weeks later, Cooper repeated the route with his close climbing partner, the late Ryan Jennings. Reflecting on the experience, Jennings wrote on social media: “Words cannot describe… my best day in the mountains ever? Glad to have gotten on this as it’s anyone’s guess when it will form again. I never cease to be amazed at where a pair of ice tools and crampons can take oneself. The position is indescribable.”
In the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), Jennings said about his partnership with Cooper: “He is the best climber I know, never afraid to take the sharp end, and for this I’ll take our differences.”
In 2015, Jennings died while ice climbing near his home in Carbondale, Colorado. Read my memoriam here. Reflecting on their partnership, Cooper says: “The best climber I’ve ever shared a rope with.”
Back on Longs Peak: Cannonball
In 2018, Cooper returned to Longs Peak for another first ascent. Alongside Kelly Cordes, he established Cannonball, a three-pitch M5 WI5/6 X route on a rarely formed strip of ice on the lower east face. “So this just went down,” Cooper wrote on Instagram. “Cordes and I scored one of the sweetest lines of our lives.”
A Gripped article on Cannonball describes the route: “The smooth granite slabs at the base of the famous wall are just off-vertical enough to hold frozen ice, but it requires a strong head and good thin-ice skills.” Cordes added, “The first [pitch] nearly shut me down. If there was good enough pro to lower from, I’d have bailed. And then the upper pillars spilling over the roofs on the final pitch—those had never connected before.”
“Coop seems ageless. And he gets after it every season,” Kelly Cordes wrote in Alpinist. He “is obsessed with new routes. ‘Firsties,’ as he calls them.”
Cooper and Jennings Survive 1,000-Foot Fall
In 2004, while descending after climbing Shaken Not Stirred on the Moose’s Tooth in Alaska, Cooper and Ryan Jennings survived a near-fatal accident. Just two pitches from the ground, their rappel anchor failed.
Jennings was rappelling off a block while Cooper, clipped to that stone and preparing to descend, waited. Suddenly, the block ripped out of the wall. “The two estimated their fall at approximately 1,000 feet over both vertical terrain and angled snow slopes,” reports the American Alpine Journal.
Jennings described the harrowing experience:
“Looking up, I fall back into darkness, spinning and sliding, faster now. The block that once held the anchor slams my shoulder, leaving a scar for life. I think it’s Cooper’s crampon. Then my ankle snaps, and I’m flying through the air for an eternity.
“I’ll never forget the feeling of flying over the ‘shrund,” Cooper says.
Stairway to Heaven
Cooper and Jennings returned to Alaska in May 2014 to make the first ascent of the 4,000-foot WI4 AI5+ X Stairway to Heaven on the north face of Mt. Johnson. Cooper described the face together, writing in the American Alpine Journal: “The first half of the wall is overhanging and undoubtedly taller than El Cap. Few lines present themselves; those that do look futuristically daunting.”
The duo committed to the only weakness on the face they could find, saying: “Dropping from the left side of the roof is a shallow, left-facing corner, barely poking out of the snow—the only semi-distinct weakness visible amongst a sea of smooth slabs. We scurry over and around a few crevasses, surmount the final ‘schrund, and arrive at the base…”
Firm snow and rotten rock characterized the opening pitch, where Spectres and Peckers were their tools of choice.
Higher on the route, Cooper describes the climbing: “I hang onto six-inch-thick, vertical névé… Calves scream…” Jennings adds, describing their mandatory simul climb mid-route as gear was nonexistent: “Sounds of tinkling, broken glass intermix with sliding snow… Three and a half hours and 700 feet of vertical later, I search for a belay… The rope, without a single piece between us, is distracting to look at, limply arching and pulling at its apex.”
Regarding the last moments as they finish the route, Cooper says, “When I turn back and see the northern lights appear, they give me clarity and energy to keep on. We reach the summit sometime after 4 a.m. A storm blankets the horizon. It all seems planned.”
To help Kevin Cooper, visit this GoFundMe.
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