Jim DiNapoli, my friend and occasional climbing partner, died yesterday, March 28, in the morning after battling pancreatic cancer for the past few months. Jim, a 59-year-old emergency room doctor, was a guy who loved rock climbing and standing on mountain summits.
When he got his cancer diagnosis on December 20, Jim was working on becoming one of the select few to climb Colorado’s Fourteeners in calendar winter, a list which includes 58 winter peaks rather than the customary 54 or 55 on the summer list. Jim had already climbed 43 of them and thought he would take a couple winters to complete the rest.
A couple weeks ago when I was visiting Jim at the hospice, he said, “I had plans climb the four peaks in Chicago Basin–Sunlight, Windom, Eolus, and North Eolous–the week after Christmas but after the doc gave me the diagnosis, he thought I should try chemotherapy and some other experimental stuff. I agreed too that I needed to give it a shot, but now I think I should have gone on that climbing trip.”
I wrote about Jim DiNapoli on March 8 in my blog post Climber Makes Legacy Bequest to Benefit Garden of the Gods and his generous donation to help maintain climbing routes at the Garden of the Gods, one of his favorite climbing areas, as well as other cliffs and areas around Colorado Springs.
That financial gift is just how Jim was as a person, always ready to take a newbie climbing or dispense whatever advice was helpful for winter mountaineering or the beta for a tough climbing move. I promised Jim the other week that I would do my best to make sure that his gift to our local climbing community would be his legacy.
I traded texts with Jim DiNapoli the past couple weeks while I was in southern Arizona and he was in the hospice at Penrose Hospital. He told me he was “fine” and that he was at peace. He didn’t want any more visitors though, so I respected his wish for privacy.
A lot of Jim’s friends, acquaintances, and climbing buddies have been posting on 14ers.com about their adventures with Jim, whose user name on 14ers.com is “DancesatMoonrise.” One of the best is by climber and Falcon Guide author Susan Joy Paul, who wrote:
“He was a passionate, and a compassionate, being, and his passions weren’t always in line with everyone else’s…. But if you’re going to go through life worried about what other people think, or who you’re going to piss off, you might as well just give up. Jim lived his life his way, and the funny thing is, he really did care what other people thought, regardless. He cared deeply about others.”
Susan also noted what she wrote in a card she gave Jim when she visited him at the hospital: “You were bigger than life, Jim. You were faster, and smarter, and more daring that most of us. And maybe some of us were just a little bit jealous.
Rest in peace Jim, after the ordeal of the past few months. We’ll always remember your passion and exuberance for all places vertical and we’ll do our best to live life fully and in the present.
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