A Remembrance of Dave Pegg, Climber and Author
Noted rock climber, magazine editor and guidebook author Dave Pegg has died. He was 47 years old. The cause of his death has not yet been released.
In the late 1990s, I queried Climbing magazine with ideas for stories about training for climbing. Pegg, an associate editor, replied with kind and encouraging words and accepted the pieces. It proved to be a watershed moment in my life, eventually leading to a move to Colorado where I joined the staff of Rock and Ice.
Pegg soon escaped from the staff editor’s grind and embarked on a new career as the founder of Wolverine Publishing, a desktop publishing venture that quickly gained an audience among climbers looking for lively, accurate and sharply produced guidebooks. The titles eventually expanded beyond the Western Colorado crags that Pegg frequented to include some of America’s premier climbing venues, from Bishop, California to Red River Gorge, Kentucky.
Working from his home near Rifle, Colorado, which he shared with his wife Fiona Lloyd, Pegg spent a lot of time outside, discovering crags, developing new routes and climbing in the upper grades of the difficulty scale. Despite his prowess, Pegg epitomized the type of climber who gets as excited about someone’s else’s success as his own.
Pegg’s enthusiasm for the sport, his dedication to giving back through words and deeds (he founded the “Rendez-Spew” gathering to help keep his beloved Rifle cliffs pristine) and his good-natured presence at the cliffs touched many climbers. I count myself lucky to be one of them.
