Ryan Van Garsse

Ryan Van Garsse, 33, passed away peacefully after a long illness on January 12 surrounded by friends and family. Ryan’s childhood years were spent in Rye, NY where he graduated from Rye High School in 2004. His love of the outdoors was apparent at an early age; he’d spend hours traipsing through the small woods behind his home and exploring the various nature preserves and marshlands that dotted his hometown. When Ryan was eleven, he convinced his parents to send him to Colorado on a three week backpacking trip, where he fell in love with the mountains and vowed to return. And that he did, attending Colorado College then the University of Colorado in Boulder. After graduating with a degree in Biology, Ryan moved to Denver where he worked as a field biologist for an environmental consulting firm. He truly felt he had landed his dream job, as he spent hours in the wilderness happily tracking the habitats of burrowing owls or recording the nesting activities of hawks. During his years living on the Front Range Ryan made the mountains his playground and immersed himself in every outdoor activity Colorado had to offer – backcountry skiing, rock climbing, kayaking, mountain biking, etc. - with a gusto, skill and stamina that was both impressive and hard to keep up with.

Ryan was happiest in the mountains, and deciding he needed to be even closer to them, he moved to Steamboat Springs in 2011 where he worked as a ski instructor before joining ACZ Laboratories, an environmental testing firm, as an Analytical Chemist. Ryan embraced the mountain town lifestyle and enjoyed the camaraderie that comes from living in a community where enjoyment of the great outdoors is utmost priority. Ryan would routinely ski before work, opting to hike up the mountain before dawn rather than wait for the chair lifts to open. He became a skilled and passionate backcountry skier: many of his winter weekends were spent camping at the base of a mountain, where he would sleep a few hours before starting the arduous upward trek in order to reach the summit at day break. An avid mountaineer, one of Ryan’s lifetime goals was to climb all 58 of Colorado’s 14ers (mountain peaks exceeding 14,000 ft.). He came close to reaching that goal, summiting 46 of them.

Ryan is survived by his parents, Karen and Jim Van Garsse (Leawood, KS) and his sister, Jessica Van Garsse (Oakland, CA), as well as a large extended family and even larger chosen family of friends, who are all forever changed by the gift of knowing him.

In lieu of flowers, a donation can be made in Ryan’s name to the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative (www.14ers.org).