On our interview trip in June, we were lucky to stop in on climbing icon John Bachar in Mammoth Lakes.  He gave us beer, let us interview him for about 3 hours, and filled our heads with hair-raising stories of free-solo epics and excruciatingly high standards of climbing style.

A little over a week ago, John Bachar was found dead near Dike Wall, having fallen while free-soloing by himself.

Needless to say, John Bachar plays a large role in our story.  His loss is sad news to the project, although we are very grateful we were able to capture his life reflections and stories while we had the chance.

Here are a few brief clips we edited from his interview that give a tiny inkling of his life and climbs:

We appreciate Peter Croft’s sentiment about the Buhl line which seems appropriate for John:

“Instead of falling to my death, I fell into life itself.”

There is an interesting outsider-perspective obituary in the New York Times you should read if you’d like to know more about the man (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/sports/09bachar.html) with a few errors, as well as a Supertopo thread with memories and pictures (http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=896012).

Setting up inside John Bachar’s Mammoth Lakes house.

R.I.P. John.