Updated August 11, 2026 09:28AM
Jake Whisenant, 30, August 2
Speed climber, first ascensionist, FKT’er, route developer, ski mountaineer, peak bagger, cyclist, surfer, fruit forager, chef, DJ, son, friend, brother, fiancé. Somehow Jake managed to be all of the above.
When the sudden and indifferent tidal wave of cataclysmic loss sweeps over your life, it is all too easy to believe the world has cruelly and unfairly betrayed you as punishment for a crime you did not commit. But Jake never took the easy route. The hard route—the one Jake would have taken—is the one where you choose to linger at the horizon long after the sun sets, basking in the incomprehensible beauty of the magic you were lucky enough to have witnessed. For Jake, I am trying to choose the hard route.
One week ago, just before sunset, I received the call that no one ever wants to get about the love of their life. Jake had fallen to his death while climbing a first ascent in Sequoia Kings Canyon. As dusk turned to night, I was forced to say goodbye to the last day we were both here on Earth.
Jake’s life was cut tragically short. His climbing career, too, was short but filled with adventures and accomplishments that speak for themselves. Matt Cornell, alpinist and a friend of Jake’s, writes: “Jake was quiet about what he did in the mountains. He was understated but highly regarded among our community and his legacy will live on through the routes he’s created.”
Like everything Jake had a passion for, he progressed fast as lightning. His achievements span almost every part of the sport. Not the type to be motivated by ego, he instead sought out objectives that purely inspired him. The combination of creativity, competence, and the drive to challenge himself allowed him to dream big.
The early years of Jake Whisenant
Jake often Facetimed his mom from the tops of California’s 14ers to show her the view. (Photo: Courtesy Emma London)
Jake grew up in the suburbs of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Over the years, his family and friends have consistently shared with me just how stubbornly he committed himself to becoming an expert in every hobby he undertook. Everyone believed he would succeed at anything he set his mind to.
Jake studied environmental studies at University of California – Santa Barbara. He had a natural curiosity for learning about history and a passion for local agriculture. During college, he worked on campus at the university’s composting program and ran produce buying for Isla Vista Food Coop. We met during this time and would frequently adventure to forage from fig, persimmon, mulberry, and avocado trees and passionfruit vines. His innate connection to the natural world brought him limitless excitement.
I first knew Jake as a great surfer and talented cyclist, but after graduating college, he began deepening his connection with the mountains. He started taking weekend trips to hike in the Sierra, drawn by the challenge of moving at high elevation. Summitting Mt. Whitney catalyzed his first goal in the mountains: Tagging each of California’s 14ers. In order to achieve this goal, he learned the necessary skills to tackle the technical and exposed summit block of Thunderbolt (14,003ft). He spent the next few years obsessively road tripping to sport climb across the Mountain West and explore adventurous Yosemite moderates. From the moment he saw Yosemite Valley, and El Capitan in particular, he was completely and utterly captivated. I knew something big had ignited in him.
Perhaps his biggest champion of all, Jake’s mother shared countless Facetime calls with him from all the summits that he miraculously had cell reception at. He always thought to call her to show her the view. They had a beautiful and supportive bond. He was her whole world. In 2021, she was diagnosed with ALS. For the year that followed, he split his time in half between caring for her in Arizona, then climbing his heart out as a way to process and find his way back to himself.
Giving back to the community through new routes
Jake climbing a route he developed in the Santa Barbara area (Photo: Courtesy Emma London)
While exploring one of the only difficult trad routes in Santa Barbara at Cold Springs Dome, we met Shaun Reed. During that time, Shaun was cleaning loose rock and adding protection bolts to an old toprope route. “Jake was curious about developing new rock climbs, so we exchanged phone numbers and started climbing at Cold Springs Dome together,” Shaun remembers.
Impressed by Jake’s quick learning and confidence, Shaun showed him how to install anchor bolts for two long forgotten toprope routes that Jake was interested in restoring. From there, they worked together to develop routes at Cold Springs Dome using modern bolting techniques to allow future climbers to show up at the base and safely lead. They were aligned in the ethics of only adding bolts for safety and ensured that the classic trad route, Makunaima (5.11c), stayed naturally protected. “I ended up with a life-long friend,” says Shaun. Jake loved development as a way to give back to the sport that had given him so much.
Towards the end of 2022, Jake’s mom passed away. In the wake of his loss, he spent many days finding solace at a small sandstone cliff he found, which he later named Hummingbird Rock that overlooks the central coast from the Santa Monicas to Point Conception. As hummingbirds fluttered all around him, he developed three sport routes in dedication to her.
Jake’s speed climbing records and adventures
Jake and Brant after snagging the speed record on Lurking Fear (Photo: Courtesy Emma London)
Countless people have shared with me how much Jake’s drive and creativity in the mountains continually inspired them. He approached climbing with a fresh, passionate eye that is rare and unique. The diversity of accomplishments within the sport—and in a short amount of time—put him into a category of his own.
Brant Hysell, a climbing partner and close friend of Jake’s, reflects: “Jake is the most well-rounded person I know. He can catch waves, sell vegetables at a farmers market, throw down a DJ set, and climb El Cap as fast or faster than anyone. He has a lot of ideas that cross all disciplines.”
Jake’s speed record on Lurking Fear
Amongst many epic shared adventures, Jake and Brant set notable Yosemite speed climbing records including The Prow (5.8 C2 V) on Washington Column (2 hours, 52 minutes, 29 seconds) and Lurking Fear (5.7 C2 VI) on El Capitan (2 hours, 55 minutes, 32 seconds). On their love of Lurking Fear, Brant says, “It could be because it stands 2,000 feet tall and is relatively secluded, but most importantly, every time we climbed it, we always had a blast!”
Jake had a magical ability to make people believe in themselves. Brant reflects that he made him feel like his “wildest goals and dreams were only a couple days of planning and a long training cycle away.” Speed climbing aside, Brant says he revealed things “that nobody else on planet earth knows, because I knew it was safe to share it with him.” Brant and Jake share a connection that few people ever get to experience from spending so much time relying on each other in the mountains.
One epic these partners shared included Jake’s idea to link as many Tuolumne domes in a day as possible. They mapped out a route that efficiently and aesthetically connected the following: Stately Pleasure Dome’s –West Country (5.7), Pywiack Dome’s Aqua Knobby (5.9), Dozier Dome’s Holdless Horror (5.6), Medlicott Dome’s Shagadelic (5.8), Drug Dome’s Crystal Meth (5.8), Mariolumne Dome’s Hobbit Book (5.7), Lamb Dome’s On the Lamb (5.9), Marmot Dome’s Cowboy Marmot (5.8), Fairview Dome’s Fairly Easy (5.4), and Lembert Dome’s Northwest Books (5.9). Jake managed to be both incredibly dialed and ultralight, while still always having something in his kit to repair gear or injury that “would see us through to the finish line,” according to Brant.
Jake’s Double NIAD record
More recently, Jake spent spring and early summer of 2026 dialing in the Nose in a Day with speed climbing partner Noah Fox. Jake and Noah set the speed record for the Double NIAD at 14 hours and 38 minutes. “I deeply admired how thoughtful and analytical he was, and how relentlessly curious he was about getting better,” says Noah. They clicked so quickly, were so on the same page, and went out of their way to help each other over the few months that they knew each other. Noah shares, “Jake was incredibly brave and bold, but he was also deeply kind, thoughtful, and wonderfully silly. In such a short time, he became a mentor, a brother, and one of my closest friends.”
The first ascents and FKTs of Jake Whisenant
Jake was passionate about giving new climbing routes back to the community. (Photo: Courtesy Emma London)
In addition to going fast, Jake loved going far. His endurance and passion for remote places lives on in his legacy of first ascents across the Sierra. In 2025, Jake and Leo Franchi established Wonka’s Way on Hershey’s Kiss in Kings Canyon. Leo writes of his late partner: “Jake combined an unparalleled amount of energy for the mountains with endless creativity and a desire to share his love of rock climbing and exploration with others. He took the responsibility of finding new routes and leaving them for others to enjoy seriously, and I was lucky enough to join him on a number of backcountry excursions deep into the Sierra, establishing new routes on walls he had spied previously from one of his many trips into the range.”
Across the Sierra, Jake’s legacy is written if you go looking for it. His other endurance feats include an FKT of Bear Creek Spire’s North Arete (5.8) car-to-car, and the White Mountain Traverse on skis, which was first completed in the `70s on a 16-day expedition. Jake and friends tackled the rugged ridge scrambling, a narrow weather window, and exposure in just over 50 hours. Since moving to the Sierra in 2024, Jake has also taken up skimo racing as a part-time hobby. Competing in races in CA, UT, and CO, he was fanatical about optimizing his gear to be as light as possible. His friends and I thought it was so endearing to hear about his new systems on practically a daily basis.
“A big-hearted mountain goat” with a love for food and spreading joy
Jake brought his love of food into every aspect of his craft. He was tremendously generous and thoughtful, always sharing his concoctions. I look back fondly on the opening party of the cliff he developed in Mammoth Lakes, called Sky Perch. He organized a shishkabob cookout at the base, while we huddled under a tarp during a monsoonal storm. Leo too concurs that you cannot separate adventure with Jake from food. “He was equally as excited to teach me how to fish and cook a meal with what we caught, as he was to venture onto a new route ground-up on a remote peak that has rarely seen human traffic,” Leo recalls.
If I had to guess what kind of objectives made Jake’s heart sing the most, it would be multi-sport linkups. Whether it was ski season or climbing season, he loved working out logistics to combine other methods of human-powered movement alongside an already proud objective. In 2025, Jack Neus and Jake did The Hulk Triathlon in the Sierra, inspired by Colorado’s Longs Peak Tri. He remembers the moment he met Jake on the Zodiac some time prior, remembering his “biceps bulging and blonde hair spilling out of one of his signature visors.” Jack says that Jake “muttered some words of psych and climbed straight through us.”
Through mutual friends, Jack and Jake stayed connected and bonded over a shared love of fast movement and multi-sport adventures. Jake dreamed up an adaptation of the famous Colorado endurance challenge, Longs Peak Tri. He “settled on something that was much bigger,” Jack says. He recalls their outing that day as “the most challenging 18 hours of my life” to this day. They climbed The Hulk door-to-door from the house in Mammoth, which involved 150 miles of human-powered travel in the form of road biking, running, and climbing. Jack says, “I will miss his strength, his courage, his thoughtfulness, and his relentless optimism even in the face of incredible challenges.”
Jake and Emma met in college. (Photo: Courtesy Emma London)
Getting to share life with Jake over the past decade was the honor of a lifetime. He packed special memories into every aspect of our day. Our breathwork and coffee morning routine, his homemade chocolate chip cookies, the carousel of ever more optimized gear that he’d be tinkering with. I will never forget the way he went above and beyond—often in costume—to support the objectives of his friends with equal or perhaps even more psych than he had for his own. The impact of Jake’s joy and vibrancy can not be overstated. But Brant says it well: “My heart goes out to everyone who knew Jake, but even more so for those who never got a chance to meet the silly, extremely motivated, big-hearted mountain goat that lives on forever in our souls.”
Jake is remembered by me and the myriad of friends that time and distance could never separate him from. If he loved you once, he loved you forever.
