Travis Lizotte didn’t merely act the part. He lived the life of the consummate outdoorsman.
So say the members of a close-knit web of family and friends that spans from coast to coast, those who best knew the 25-year-old Aspen native and Outward Bound wilderness education instructor who died Sunday in a mountaineering accident during an ascent of Mount Tronador near Bariloche, Argentina.
Lizotte was one of three staffers leading a 72-day course with 11 students ages 18 to 23 when an ice bridge collapsed near the mountain summit and his four-person rope team fell into a crevasse.
According to the North Carolina Outward Bound School where Lizotte worked, student Jack Paskin of Shaker Heights, Ohio, was treated for a fractured arm and student Kelsy Morganwalp of Herndon, Va., remains hospitalized with multiple fractures and chest and back injuries. Lizotte was pronounced dead at the scene.
The fourth person, a student whose name has not been released, was not injured.
“There’s no way Travis would do anything different than what he was doing. You just have to respect him and love him for it. That’s who he was,” his father, Jeff, said on the phone Tuesday from Aspen. “Here in Aspen, we lose people like Travis a lot. It absolutely hurts, but I think people here realize the mountains are so special. They have the power to give and the power to take, but I think they give more than they take.”
Recognized for his wild snarl of hair, bushy red beard and enthusiasm for life and learning in the outdoors, Travis Lizotte made an impression that lingers from his hometown of Aspen to college friends at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state and outdoor schools from Oregon to North Carolina. They all agree he was adequately skilled to tackle the 11,411-foot peak in Patagonia’s Nahuel Huapi National Park.
The love for tall peaks and all things outdoors was instilled at a young age by his parents, Jeff and Dianne, and nurtured through programs in the Aspen school district. Evidence of his deep commitment grew in high school, when Travis gave up his bedroom and spent a winter sleeping on the family’s deck.
Lizotte expanded his expertise as a leader of an outdoor program at college before training under Mike Armstrong, program director at an Outward Bound camp in Redmond, Ore., and later leading trips for Outward Bound in Mazama, Wash., and for the North Carolina Outward Bound School directed by Whitney Montgomery in Asheville, N.C.
“It definitely was a calling,” Armstrong said. “Everyone at Outward Bound has to be an expert in outdoors, and some people come in thinking they’ll be guides, but Travis’ big thing was compassion. That’s a core value at Outward Bound, but it’s something he really embraced and worked with his students on.”
A memorial service is planned at noon Saturday at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
