Rock Climbing Guide Dies While Teaching Safety Course in ‘Tragic Climbing Accident’
Audrie Pelosi lived a life filled with “adventure, connection, and purpose,” her obituary reads
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NEED TO KNOW
- Rock climbing guide Audrie Pelosi died on May 30, according to her obituary
- She died while teaching a climbing safety course at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo, Wis., her friend and colleague told a local outlet
- Pelosi is remembered for living a life of “adventure” and “always seeking the next mountain to climb”
A rock climbing guide died while teaching a gear safety course on May 30 at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo, Wis.
Audrie Pelosi died in “a tragic climbing accident,” according to an obituary from Redlin-Ertz Funeral Home. She was 30 years old.
Pelosi’s friend and colleague Jeff Vogtschaller told local outlet WMTV that she died while teaching a safety course about climbing gear. Community members mourning the loss have left flowers at Wildside Action Sports, the climbing gear shop managed by Pelosi’s husband Jimmy Robinson.
“Some of them are from florists and some of them are from people who went in their garden and picked,” Vogtschaller told the outlet of Pelosi, who also worked for Apex Adventure Alliance.
Speaking of Pelosi’s final moments, Vogtschaller told the outlet: “She just moved a few yards away to set up a whole new bunch of equipment a few yards away and that’s the last anyone saw of Audrie. No one really knows what happened.”
“We are shocked and saddened, and we are sending our deepest condolences to her family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and climbing community,” Friends of Devils Lake State Park wrote in a Facebook post. “We thank her for all she brought to the Baraboo community.”
A GoFundMe started by Anastasia Exterovich to support Robinson amid his wife’s funeral arrangements has surpassed its $5,000 goal and raised over $23,000 as of Thursday, June 4.
The fundraiser’s description explains that Pelosi and Robinson met at a snowboarding event and later married at Mount Bohemia in Michigan.
“Everyone who knows them knows that they were made for each other – I have never met a more rad couple,” it reads, before saluting Pelosi’s generosity.
“In my last conversation with Audrie, she joked about selling her handmade bike chain link earrings to anyone who wanted them for ‘free.99.’ It was such a simple statement made in passing, but it perfectly encapsulated who she was as a person.”
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Pelosi’s obituary says she lived a life filled with “adventure, connection, and purpose, always seeking the next mountain to climb, trail to ride, or snow-covered slope to explore” and was “a lover not a fighter, a climber not a whiner, one tough adventure chick.”
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Instead of flowers, Pelosi’s family has asked mourners to consider a donation to Ruff Rescue, NAMI, The Access Fund, Protect Our Winters or “another charitable organization you feel Audrie would love.”
A Celebration of Life in Pelosi’s hometown of Duluth, Minn., is to be determined.
PEOPLE has reached out to a spokesperson for Devil’s Lake State Park.