I always thought Ammon McNeely’s pirate shtick was a little extra. Hoisting a skull and crossbones flag from every portaledge. All the “Arrrs” and “Mateys.” That kind of role play is exhausting to be around.

But then he got in a BASE jumping accident in 2017 and had to have his leg amputated. The El Cap Pirate, literally, got a peg leg.

OK … that’s kinda cool, I thought. He’s a real pirate now!

Beneath his swashbuckling pretensions, however, Ammon was an authentic iconoclast, a bold climber, and a genuinely sweet guy. In Yosemite in the early 2000s, I was but an insignificant satellite peripheral to Ammon and the greater Stone Monkey scene, but I nevertheless drank my fair share of King Cobras with the guy in the darker recesses of the Valley, as far from the rangers’ prying eyes as we could get. He was kind, funny, and just out of his mind in a way that captured, for me at the time, the sense in which climbing was filled with interesting, complex characters.

Ammon McNeely died last weekend in a truly random and sad accident. According to some of the posts I read online, Ammon was at the edge of a cliff, either checking out a new BASE exit, or watching a sunset, or both. And he basically just lost his footing, likely due to his prosthetic leg, and fell. For a guy who has sneered in death’s face so many times and never once returned from these close calls with his tail between his legs, he deserved a better death. I know that sounds weird to say, but I’m often struck by how senseless and banal many deaths are of people whom we revere for their risk-taking and bravery. In storybooks, we expect that pirates die walking the plank or getting swallowed by the giant sea monster during an epic battle; not from falling off the side of the ship during a calm stretch of water.

Ammon McNeely climbed over 60 El Cap routes, and holds big-wall speed records on a significant number of them. In fact, I read that he holds more El Cap speed records than anyone else. He had a natural talent for aid climbing. He climbed the North American Wall as his first ever big wall, for example—and did it solo. One of his most notable ascents was repeating the controversial Wings of Steel, a route with more hooking than a Fontainebleau forest. His willingness to stand on precarious hooks far above dangerous factor-2 fall potentials, and the speed with which he could dispatch these heinous leads, earned him recognition as one of the best big-wall speed-aid climbers of our generation.

It might also be fair to say that he was also the last prominent member of this cohort. Over the past couple of decades, free climbing El Capitan went from something fewer than 10 people in the world could do to a tick that dozens and dozens of “regular” folks now achieve. And with that shift in preference toward free climbing El Cap, aid feels wholly passé. People seem to have stopped caring about things like what the speed record is on the Reticent Wall, and the whole scene around this climbing genre feels like it has collapsed.

The tragic and sad occasion of Ammon’s death offers us a moment to not only examine the life of Ammon McNeely and salute him as one of the sport’s most unique and accomplished figures, but perhaps to also clearly see what climbing no longer is.

About a decade ago, as an editor at Rock and Ice, I worked with Cedar Wright on a rather memorable profile that he wrote of his friend Ammon. The story contains one of my favorite images that’s ever appeared in a climbing feature: an anecdote of Ammon rapping down 1,000 feet of fixed line, with a haul bag on his harness, and using a Munter hitch because he had forgotten his belay device. The Munter hitch kinked the rope so bad that by the time Ammon reached the ground he was spinning like Brian Boitano at the end of his figure-skating routine.

Cedar’s story began by placing Ammon within the climbing culture writ large:

Climbing is a refuge for iconoclasts who want nothing to do with the common ideas of “success,” and instead choose to follow their passion down an alternative path of exploration and vertical ascent. The pantheon of our sport is rich with characters such as Jim Bridwell, Warren Harding, and Fred Beckey, who climbed hard and lived even harder, embodying a nonconformist lifestyle that placed experience and hedonism before financial gain.

Now, it seems, climbing is mainstream. Every city has at least one gym and a generation of grommets doesn’t know Royal Robbins from Baskin-Robbins. Some might argue that the era of the colorful, rule-breaking climbing maverick has ended. For those saddened by this notion, I have two words: Ammon McNeely.

This was penned in 2012, before the Dawn Wall, Free Solo, the Olympics, and before ground had broken on the next few hundred climbing gyms that would soon be constructed. I wonder how you think that passage holds up? It’s not that I don’t think climbing could continue to be a refuge for iconoclasts; it’s more that I don’t see that many iconoclasts in climbing at all. I make this observation not to fall into “back-in-the-day-ism,” but merely as an objective observation.

The piece ends like so:

In an era where shirtless douchebags with beanies down-rate each others’ lowball choss nuggets, Ammon McNeely is strong evidence that climbing will never be mainstream. In fact, it seems like climbing is doing just fine.

Over my years as a climber who loves sport climbing but whose roots are in trad, I’ve noticed an internal tension just within my own self, trying to straddle these two worlds between the performance-oriented approaches of sport climbing, and the system-fucking debauchery of hard-living dirtbaggery. I have room in my heart for both of these disparate styles and aesthetics, and would hate to see climbing ever become just one or the other. I also see their blind spots. I’ve critiqued that common trope of scoffing at so-called shirtless douchebags on lowball choss nuggets as just elitist nonsense … But I also get it. It’s stupid to take yourself and climbing so seriously. And perhaps the Platonic ideal of not taking yourself or climbing too seriously may be found in hoisting a pirate flag from your portaledge ship while slamming back a case of malt liquor.

The sad occasion of Ammon McNeely’s death seems to shine a light on how serious most climbers are today. Looking around, I see a lot of healthy, fit, and well-adjusted people for whom the most interesting topic of climbing conversation is whether adding deadlifts into your hangboard circuit is effective. But I don’t see any pirates. Matey, that’s a shame.