Qualla: Michael Reardon (climber)

Michael Reardon (climber): Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the afternoon of 13 July 2007, Michael Reardon climbed a sea cliff on the north shore of Valentia Island called Dohilla. He climbed it without rope or partner, the way he had climbed thousands of other routes. He topped out, walked back along the cliff edge to descend a different line, and was photographed by his friend Damon Corso doing both. Then, in a moment captured between frames, a wave that should not have reached where he was standing did reach him. He was forty-two years old. His body was never recovered. The cliffs are still there, and the wave that took him still arrives at the same place from time to time, the way Atlantic waves do.

Michael Reardon (climber): What He Did

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Reardon was a free-solo climber, a small fraternity of people who climb significant rock without ropes, harnesses, or partners. He came late to the sport, taking it seriously only in his thirties, but once he committed he produced a body of work that drew the attention of the wid...

Michael Reardon (climber): The Long Solo on the Palisades

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

His most striking single feat may have been on the Palisade Traverse, a high-altitude scramble across the Sierra Nevada in California that links a series of fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. The previous unroped traverse had taken twelve days. Reardon, working alone, completed it in ...

Michael Reardon (climber): Dohilla

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 2007 he had begun to film a documentary about solo climbing on Irish sea cliffs. Dohilla, on the rough north shore of Valentia Island, was the kind of location he favored: low-altitude, geologically interesting, and quietly serious. He climbed his line that afternoon, came dow...

Michael Reardon (climber): What Remained

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

His daughter was thirteen at the time. The climbing community lost not only one of its most prolific soloists but one of its more thoughtful voices; Reardon wrote and spoke publicly about the choices involved in his discipline, the discipline itself, and the cost when those choic...