BOULDER — The local climbing community is mourning the death of one of its cornerstones.
A body found over the weekend in avalanche debris at about 22,000 feet on Mount Edgar in southwestern China was identified Sunday as Jonathan “Jonny” Copp, 35, of Boulder, according to organizers of a search party.
Friends described Copp as a world-class climber who was “bigger than life.”
“Our deepest condolences and love go to all of Jonny’s family and friends — and that list of people is so long,” Robb Shurr, a spokesperson for the search effort, wrote in an e-mail. “He will be sorely missed, but we celebrate his inspiring and amazing life.”
A search was launched Friday for Copp and two other American climbers after they missed their June 3 flight back from Chengdu. Climbing with Copp were Boulder’s Micah Dash, 32, and Minnesota climber Wade Johnson, 24, who was based in Boulder.
Rescue workers are still searching for the other two climbers.
American climbers Eric Decaria and Nick Martino have landed in China and are expected to arrive in base camp today to coordinate the search effort with a Chinese team. A second team of American climbers, Peter Takeda and Steven Su, also is en route to China.
Copp was born in Singapore in 1974, traveling the world with parents Phyllis and John Copp in a truck with a pop-up camper. The family settled in Fullerton, Calif., where Copp first discovered the joy of rock climbing, climbing at first with an electrician’s harness and a nylon towrope.
Since then, friends said, he’s become “one of the best in the world,” excelling in all types of climbing and ascending the world’s steepest walls and mountains.
Copp founded the Boulder-based Adventure Film Festival in 2005, where he and longtime friend Mark Reiner created a global platform for those who made adventure films.
Reiner, who is organizing the search for the missing team with the help of dozens of friends and colleagues at the Adventure Film office in downtown Boulder, said Copp lived in the moment and made family, friends, playing music, writing, photography and climbing his priorities.
“Jonny was a living example, not just in climbing but in all aspects of his life, that we are capable of things as big as we can imagine,” Reiner wrote in an e-mail.
Reiner said Copp, his friend since they were 12, was like a brother.
“We played soccer together, built skate ramps, started climbing together, traveled the world and ran a business together,” he wrote. “He is gone from this Earth as I knew him, but he will be alive with me forever.”
Ben Alexandra, who runs the Adventure Film website, described Copp as having boundless energy, dancing late into the night with friends and still getting up early to do yoga or go for a run or a climb.
“He had an amazing ability to inspire and energize people and, when he interacted with them, you could see them light up just from being in his presence,” Alexandra wrote in an e-mail.
