'Fun at a very high level'

Many of Andy Zimet’s closest friends say he died doing what he loved.

But the opposite also is true: He lived doing what he loved.

Zimet was a Whitefish physician and consummate outdoorsman who pushed the boundaries as an extreme skier, mountaineer and kayaker. He was on a solo expedition in the Pamir Mountains of Kyrgyzstan when he was found dead July 3 in a sleeping bag inside his tent.

A preliminary autopsy determined Zimet, 60, died of edema and cephaledema complicated by mountain sickness, also referred to as altitude sickness.

He was an experienced explorer who meticulously mapped out the details of his trips, including the elevation where he was going to be each day.

“He knew how to do this, and for Andy it wasn’t that high,” his wife, Linda, said about the spot where he was discovered below the summit of a 23,000-foot peak. “He’d gone higher and stayed at higher elevations longer. Sometimes the body does weird things.”

Those in Zimet’s inner circle said he had the true heart of an explorer.

“Andy had no end to his desire to do what he was doing,” said Don Scharfe, owner of Rocky Mountain Outfitter in Kalispell and a longtime ski mountaineering companion of Zimet. “He did push harder than anyone I know in the valley. He wasn’t afraid to go out alone and do big things alone. Not many people would do that. This particular climb he was on was one of those scenarios.”

Zimet’s many accomplishments in the world of extreme sports flew largely under the radar. He wasn’t a self-promoter; he simply went out and did big things.

The breadth of his climbing, kayaking and skiing journeys took him to remote spots around the world, including China, Kyrgyzstan, Canada, Argentina, Bolivia, Nepal, India, Chile and Alaska.

Zimet is considered to be the first known skier to complete ski descents of the “Big Six” — six peaks over 10,000 feet in Glacier Park. He spent two decades chipping away at the feat, successfully skiing Mount Jackson, Mount Merritt, Mount Siyeh and Mount Cleveland before tackling Mount Stimson in 1997 with fellow skier Pete Costain.

It was a number of years before he completed the final peak because his focus diverted to whitewater kayaking for about 12 years.

When a neck injury sidelined his extreme kayaking, Zimet reverted to skiing and continued on his way to bagging the Big Six. Kintla Peak, at 10,101 feet, presented a challenge. He had attempted it a couple of times, to no avail.

On the Fourth of July three years ago, Zimet and longtime friend Jay Shaver took another stab at Kintla.

“It’s a classic Andy story,” Shaver said, explaining how Zimet had gone up three other times but couldn’t get across Upper Kintla Lake.

“Finally he comes up with the idea to take inflatable rafts,” Shaver recalled. So they canoed across Lower Kintla Lake and hiked to Upper Kintla, then used the rafts to cross the outlet. From there, Shaver said the climb was “the most difficult thing I’ve ever climbed with skis on my back.”

The wildfires of 2003 had burned through a once-impenetrable thicket, but maneuvering through the layers of burned logs was like walking in pick-up sticks, Shaver said. They skied off the summit down Kintla’s north face, but Zimet still had in mind another route he’d studied, so the next weekend he returned and completed a second successful first descent off Kintla.

“In Andy’s world that’s just another day,” Shaver said. “He was certainly not afraid of doing things by himself. He was incredibly safe, and the conditions were always appropriate, but it’s a high-risk game.

“I can’t hold a candle to his skill level, but I hit the two criteria for being a ski buddy,” Shaver said. “One, I could keep up, and two, I never told anyone where we skied.”

Renowned outdoor adventure travel writer Jon Turk of Darby pointed to Zimet’s first descent of a river in Nepal as “the biggest thing he did on an international scale.”

Zimet and four other Americans tackled a first descent of the Langu Khola River in the northwestern reaches of Nepal. During that trip in 1999, they began kayaking at more than 14,000 feet, moving through Class V and VI rapids.

“He was totally cutting-edge, on top of the game at that time,” Turk said.

Turk first met Zimet about 20 years ago during an attempt to summit Denali in Alaska.

“We got blown off the mountain by a big storm, so we came down to base camp,” he recalled.

Instead of sulking over their predicament, Zimet suggested they fly over to Ruth Gorge and “ski some cool lines.” Turk agreed and a lifelong friendship was forged.

“That week on Ruth we had so much fun together. It wasn’t doing big heroics like climbing [Denali],” he said. “The bond that was made persevered over the years.

It was never about the heroics or the recognition for Zimet, Turk stressed. It was about “having fun at a very high level.

“To people not in the game it might seem like a fine line, and it is a funny fine line,” Turk continued. “Andy had his ego to accomplish things, but at the same time he had one of the greatest senses of fun and enjoying those things of anybody I’ve ever known.

There was a consummate element to Zimet’s professional work at North Valley Hospital, too. He had worked at the Whitefish hospital since 1989 as an anesthesiologist.

“He was always real current on the new research and was very good with his patients,” said Dr. David Nichols, who was a partner with Zimet. “He was very well-liked and appreciated by the medical staff. He interacted with other departments in a very positive way.”

Zimet talked about his many expeditions, but always in a low-key manner, Nichols said.

And Zimet always was planning his next trip, he added.

“He pushed his limits; Andy always pushed,” said Turk, who has received National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year award several times.

The cliché aside about climbing a mountain “because it’s there,” Zimet’s extreme quest was, at some level, “some sort of a spiritual journey,” Turk said. “Bringing yourself so close to the ultimate edges ... if you’re out there long enough, magical things happen to you.”

A memorial service for Zimet will be held at 6:30 p.m. today at the Base Lodge at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.