Robbi Mecus, a Brandnew York Surrounding woodland ranger who led search-and-rescue missions and was a accentuation inside the L.G.B.T.Q. mountain climbing crowd, died nearest falling about 1,000 ft from a top at Denali Nationwide Soil and Saving in Alaska on Thursday. She was once 52.
Her dying was once showed through the Brandnew York Surrounding Branch of Environmental Conservation, the place she labored for 25 years.
Ms. Mecus, who labored most commonly within the Adirondacks, looked for and rescued misplaced and injured climbers dealing with hypothermia and alternative ultimatum within the desolate tract. Utmost year, she helped rescue a frostbitten hiker who was once misplaced within the Adirondack Mountains in a single day.
At era 44, she got here out as transgender, she mentioned in a 2019 interview with the Brandnew York Town Trans Oral Historical past challenge. She after labored to foster a supportive crowd for lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, queer and wondering climbers within the North Nation of Brandnew York.
“I want people to see that trans people can do amazing things,” she mentioned in an interview for a mountain climbing site, goEast, in 2022. “I think it helps when young trans people see other trans people accomplishing things. I think it lets them know that their life doesn’t have to be full of negativity and it can actually be really rad.”
Basil Seggos, former commissioner of Brandnew York’s Branch of Environmental Conservation, known as Ms. Mecus a “pillar of strength” and an incredible chief for L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, noting she was once “always there” for probably the most tough rescues and crises.
“I feel fortunate to have known her,” he mentioned on social media. “Rest in peace, Ranger.”
Ms. Mecus was once born in Brandnew York Town in October 1971 and grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a Catholic, working-class community together with her oldsters and an used brother and used sister.
“Growing up in New York City, I always knew that I was a mountain girl,” she mentioned within the 2019 interview. She recalled reducing up photos of woodlands and mountains and tacking them to her wall.
She were given concerned within the Brandnew York mountain climbing crowd, and in 2008 met Carolyn Riccardi, who mentioned they bonded over their shared reports rising up in Brooklyn and their love of large steel song.
“The climbing community has some diversity to it, but you don’t meet a lot of blue collar kids from Brooklyn, and you don’t meet a lot of kids that are into heavy metal,” Ms. Riccardi mentioned on Sunday.
Ms. Mecus had mentioned she known as feminine since she was once very younger, regardless that she struggled to come back to phrases together with her identification for many years. She married a girl, and so they had a kid in combination.
Next discovering a crowd on-line the place she felt she had an outlet to specific herself, she got here out as transgender. She was a pacesetter of the L.G.B.T.Q. mountain climbing crowd, desperate to percentage her personal reports and be a fashion to others.
“Fifteen years ago, there was no L.G.B.T. climbing community,” Ms. Riccardi mentioned. “When I came out, there wasn’t any community like that. But Robbi helped build it.”
Ms. Mecus died generation ascending Mount Johnson, an 8,400-foot top, alongside a path referred to as the Escalator, a steep and technical alpine climb at the top’s southeast face. The 5,000-foot path comes to navigating steep rock, ice and snow.
Some other climber who was once roped to Ms. Mecus, a 30-year-old lady from California whose title was once no longer exempted, was once severely injured within the fall.
“These are the climbs that she truly loved,” Ms. Riccardi mentioned of Ms. Mecus. “This was her special thing. She loved these kind of mixed climbs that had a lot of complexity.”
Her survivors come with her daughter.
Within the interview with Brandnew York Town Trans Oral Historical past challenge, Ms. Mecus described her try to form an identification past the stereotypes of who she idea she needed to be.
However nearest popping out, she mentioned, she advanced her personal definition of her gender, her “own version of femininity.”
“I thought that in order to be accepted as a woman, that I would have to model myself after all the other women I see,” she mentioned. “And I think one of the big lessons I’ve learned in the past three years is that I don’t have to model myself after anybody, except me.”
