After a man died in an avalanche near Berthoud Pass in northern Colorado’s Rocky Mountains over the weekend, his friends and family took to the internet to mourn.
“He’s left behind the deepest memories of love, adoration and friendship a wife could only dream of,” Carrie Ginn, the wife of 50-year-old Nathan Ginn, wrote Monday in a memorial Facebook post on her husband’s page. “Thank you … for showing us all how to live our best lives one day at a time.”
Nathan Ginn died Saturday when an avalanche rocketed down Mines Peak in an area known as “The Fingers” or the “High Trail Cliffs,” according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and Grand County Coroner’s Office.
In her memorial Facebook post, Carrie Ginn noted her last conversation with her husband was about how having a bucket list is a terrible idea and that life is about taking action. She wrote her husband died on a mountain pass he’d ridden for 30 years, where they had their second date and where he later proposed to her under the light of a full moon.
“His wife, Carrie, wanted the surfing community to know that Nathan died doing what he loved,” one friend wrote in a blog post on Super Critical Flows, a website dedicated to river surfing. According to reporting from Denver7, the blog was written by Nathan Ginn’s decade-long friend David Riordon.
Riordon wrote that Nathan Ginn was an active powsurfer, river surfer, skateboarder and elementary school art teacher. He also volunteered for many years, teaching river surfing and skateboarding to Chill Foundation youth in Denver, and “had an infectious smile and personality,” Riordon continued.
Powsurfing, also known as powder surfing, refers to riding a snowboard down a mountain without any foot bindings or handles.
“I’ll miss my best friend Nathan Jay Ginn,” Carrie Ginn wrote. “Dinners by our fireplace. Reading stories at bedtime. But my heart is calm in the knowing he’s up there showing God how the next wild rumpus will begin.”
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