Jess Roskelley

Roskelley died on descent after reaching the summit of Howse Peak in Banff National Park of the Canadian Rockies on 16 April 2019, with Austrian climbers David Lama and Hansjörg Auer. The group completed a difficult variation of a route on the east face of Howse Peak known as M-16 in under 7 hours. The Auer-Lama-Roskelley variation took a line to the left of M-16, after the first difficult waterfall pitch on that route. Their bodies were found on 21 April 2019.[12][13]

Roskelley was married on July 25, 2015 to Allison Spencer. Jess Roskelley has two sisters, Jordan and Dawn Roskelley. Roskelley was a sponsored athlete for Adidas Outdoor prior to joining The North Face Athlete Team in 2018.

Roskelley later while living in Spokane, divided his time in Alaska between climbing and working as a tank welder. In October 2012, he and John Frieh climbed a new route on Mount Wake in the Alaska Range. They called the route The Cook Inlet. In April 2013, Roskelley, Ben Erdmann and Kristoffer Szilas forged a new route on the Citadel, a peak in the Kichatna Mountains of Alaska. The route, which is next to Supa Dupa Couloir, was named Hypa Zypa Couloir.

Roskelley began his career in mountain climbing as a guide on Mount Rainier. He passed the Rainier Mountain Guides exam at the age of eighteen, and by the age of twenty (in 2003) he had reached the summit 35 times as a guide.

In March 2003, Roskelley and his father, mountaineer John Roskelley, traveled to Mount Everest as members of an expedition named "Generations on Everest". The expedition marked Jess's first attempt at the Everest summit, while it was his father's fourth attempt, having failed on three attempts earlier in his career. Father and son successfully reached the summit on May 21, 2003, at which time Jess Roskelley, at the age of twenty, became the youngest American to have reached the summit of Everest. In 2010, this record was surpassed by Jordan Romero, who summited Everest at the age of thirteen.

Jess Fenton Roskelley (July 13, 1982 – April 16, 2019) was an American mountaineer. On May 21, 2003, at age twenty, he became the youngest American to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He died in an avalanche while climbing on Howse Peak in the Canadian Rockies.

Roskelley was born on July 13, 1982 and raised in Spokane, Washington, where he attended Mt. Spokane High School. He was the son of mountaineer John Roskelley and Joyce Roskelley, a teacher. He later moved to Montana to attend the University of Montana.