Robbi Mecus, a New York State forest ranger who led search-and-rescue missions and have become a distinguished voice inside the L.G.B.T.Q. climbing group, died after falling about 1,000 toes from a peak at Denali Nationwide Park and Protect in Alaska on Thursday. She was 52.
Her loss of life was confirmed by the New York State Division of Environmental Conservation, the place she labored for 25 years.
Ms. Mecus, who labored principally within the Adirondacks, looked for and rescued misplaced and injured climbers dealing with hypothermia and different threats within the wilderness. This month, she helped rescue a frostbitten hiker who was misplaced within the Adirondack Mountains in a single day.
At age 44, she got here out as transgender, she stated in a 2019 interview with the New York Metropolis Trans Oral Historical past mission. She then labored to foster a supportive group for lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning climbers within the North Nation of New York.
“I would like folks to see that trans folks can do superb issues,” she stated in an interview for a climbing web site, goEast, in 2022. “I feel it helps when younger trans folks see different trans folks conducting issues. I feel it lets them know that their life doesn’t need to be filled with negativity and it will probably truly be actually rad.”
Basil Seggos, former commissioner of New York’s Division of Environmental Conservation, known as Ms. Mecus a “pillar of energy” and an amazing chief for L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, noting she was “all the time there” for essentially the most tough rescues and crises.
“I really feel lucky to have recognized her,” he stated on social media. “Relaxation in peace, Ranger.”
Ms. Mecus was born in New York Metropolis in October 1971 and grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a Catholic, working-class household together with her dad and mom and an older brother and older sister.
“Rising up in New York Metropolis, I all the time knew that I used to be a mountain woman,” she stated within the 2019 interview. She recalled chopping up footage of forests and mountains and tacking them to her wall.
She obtained concerned within the New York climbing group, and in 2008 met Carolyn Riccardi, who stated they bonded over their shared experiences rising up in Brooklyn and their love of heavy metallic music.
“The climbing group has some range to it, however you don’t meet numerous blue collar youngsters from Brooklyn, and also you don’t meet numerous youngsters which are into heavy metallic,” Ms. Riccardi stated on Sunday.
Ms. Mecus had stated she recognized as feminine since she was very younger, although she struggled to come back to phrases together with her id for many years. She married a girl, they usually had a toddler collectively.
After discovering a group on-line the place she felt she had an outlet to precise herself, she got here out as transgender. She turned a frontrunner of the L.G.B.T.Q. climbing group, desirous to share her personal experiences and be a mannequin to others.
“Fifteen years in the past, there was no L.G.B.T. climbing group,” Ms. Riccardi stated. “Once I got here out, there wasn’t any group like that. However Robbi helped construct it.”
Ms. Mecus died whereas ascending Mount Johnson, an 8,400-foot peak, alongside a route generally known as the Escalator, a steep and technical alpine climb on the height’s southeast face. The 5,000-foot route includes navigating steep rock, ice and snow.
One other climber who was roped to Ms. Mecus, a 30-year-old lady from California whose title was not launched, was significantly injured within the fall.
“These are the climbs that she actually beloved,” Ms. Riccardi stated of Ms. Mecus. “This was her particular factor. She beloved these form of combine climbs that had numerous complexity.”
Her survivors embody her daughter.
Within the interview with New York Metropolis Trans Oral Historical past mission, Ms. Mecus described her battle to develop an id past the stereotypes of who she thought she needed to be.
However after popping out, she stated, she developed her personal definition of her gender, her “personal model of femininity.”
“I assumed that with a view to be accepted as a girl, that I must mannequin myself in any case the opposite girls I see,” she stated. “And I feel one of many large classes I’ve discovered previously three years is that I don’t need to mannequin myself after anyone, besides me.”
