The Sherpa set off down the mountain with the wind screaming around him and only the light of the moon reflecting off the snow. Before he disappeared into the night in search of help, he turned toward Dave Ashley.

“Dave,” the Sherpa called out, “this is your chance to come down.”

“I can’t leave Shelley,” Ashley replied. His body was curled around his life and business partner, Shelley Johannesen. An avalanche had rolled her to a cliffside, where she was passing in and out of consciousness. Ashley had stretched a sleeping bag between his hand and his foot as a windshield, but it struggled to fend off the biting cold of a spring night at 23,400 feet.

The Sherpa paused. “You know what that might mean?”

“I know,” Ashley said. “I can’t leave Shelley.”

Around 4 a.m. the next morning, Johannesen — who always seemed to know what was best for others, especially Ashley — left him. She died in his arms on Mount Makalu, the fifth-highest peak in the world, while waiting for the arrival of rescuers who were thwarted by an unexpected storm. It was an abrupt end to the 53-year-old’s new life as a mountaineer, as a Utahn and as Ashley’s partner — a life she appeared to find as uplifting as the mountains they climbed.

“She had a lot left to live,” said Beth Downing, one of Johannesen’s Park City adventure friends. “But she also really lived what she had. Especially in the last 10 years or so, since she had chosen a life that prioritized adventure.”

Adventure first

Johannesen’s final day was not the first day she had spared another’s life on one of the highest mountains in the world.

She and Ashley, 51, scaled a dizzying number of high-altitude climbs since they became a couple in 2023 and moved to Utah in 2024. They summited Ecuador’s Chimborazo (20,549 feet) and Cotopaxi (19,347 feet), Pico de Orizaba (18,492 feet) in Mexico and Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet) in Tanzania, among others — including several peaks in Nepal. They guided many of the expeditions through DASH Adventures, the adventure travel company Ashley founded three years ago in part to facilitate their wanderlust. The company’s slogan is “Climbing mountains and making friends.”

Last year, the couple attempted Everest because Johannesen was mulling the idea of attempting the Seven Summits — scaling the highest peak on all seven continents. Ashley became the first kidney donor to complete the Seven Summits, which he accomplished in just 11 months between 2021 and 2022. He saw no reason Johannesen couldn’t check off the same goal. Whereas most people become lethargic in the thin air, whenever the former Boston College cross-country runner reached high altitude, Ashley said she seemed to find another gear.

“If she had found climbing earlier in life,” Ashley, who lives in Francis, told The Salt Lake Tribune, “she probably would have been a pretty renowned high-elevation climber.”

Ashley developed a cough during the couple’s attempt at Everest, which at 29,032 feet is the world’s tallest mountain. So, he sent Johannesen ahead with their guides. When they reached the South Summit — just a 40-minute hike from the top — they realized her oxygen mask was malfunctioning. The Sherpa who was with her had summited Everest at least 10 times, and he volunteered to give Johannesen his mask while he stayed put and waited for her to return.

She considered the offer, weighing the thrill of achieving the goal of a lifetime against the risk of leaving the guide at 28,700 feet for more than an hour without oxygen. Then, she turned around and hiked back toward camp. Despite her choice, her oxygen-deprived guide struggled to get back down the mountain. Ashley believes that if Johannesen had tried to summit, the Sherpa would have died waiting for her.

Downing said Johannesen told her she had never felt stronger than in that moment.

“There are a lot of people who have reached the summit of Everest who would not have been strong enough to turn around within a visible, reachable distance,” Downing said. “So she belongs to the elite of the elite for being able to make that decision and be happy about it.”

She said Johannesen’s ability to empathize and include others made traveling with the mother of three and former teacher a transformative experience. Those qualities and her adventurous spirit are also what intoxicated Ashley when they started dating back when both were recently divorced and living in Virginia. A retired Air Force rocket engineer, Ashley suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He said Johannesen called herself his service dog for the way she could calm him in crowded, enclosed spaces and other stressful situations.

On top of Mount Makalu, he got a chance to return the favor.

Storm on Makalu

The storm was an anomaly, Ashley said, and so was the avalanche.

He, Johannesen and their two guides had climbed all night to reach the 27,838-foot summit of Mount Makalu on May 9. With a two-day window of fair weather in the forecast, their plan was to descend down past Camp III to the relatively low-elevation Camp II and rest there. Yet, as they began their return, a dense, wet snow began to fall on the peak. It slowed their progress, forcing them to spend the night at Camp III.

With both oxygen supplies and provisions running low, they opted to make a short, hard push the next morning to Camp II, where they would recuperate.

“We were told, ‘Hey, the winds are going to be a little higher,’ but, again, nobody — nobody — thought, ‘Hey, you should stay at Camp III a third night, because the snow is not good, or the winds are too high,’” Ashley said. “Nobody thought that. Makalu just does not have avalanches.”

With a death rate above 10%, though, Mount Makalu is considered dangerous. And sudden snowstorms and slides aren’t completely unheard of. Of the 29 fatalities tracked between 1954 and 2009 by 8000ers.com, three were attributed to avalanches. However, climbers were many times more likely to die from falls or the repercussions of a lack of oxygen — including a 38-year-old Czech man who died a week before Johannesen, likely from altitude sickness.

The day before Johannesen’s death, though, an avalanche did come through. A wet slab gave way in winds of up to 60 mph and sheared off the mountain just as Johannesen and her guide, Tawa Sherpa, clipped onto a new section of rope. Ashley, who was behind them with his guide, saw the first cracks and called out a warning, but it all happened too fast. The avalanche knocked Johannesen and her guide down and, as it gained momentum, snapped their guide rope. Eventually, it deposited them on the side of a glacier, about 10 feet from a sheer cliff’s edge.

As Ashley and his guide began what would be a roughly two-hour, ropeless descent through the rocks, snow and high winds to try to find them, Johannesen’s voice came through the radio. She said they were hurt — they couldn’t move — but they were alive.

“We got down there,” Ashley recalled, “and here’s two people who picked a really bad place to not die.”

Tawa Sherpa had broken his back and was on his hands and knees in the snow — Ashley later reported he would lose part of two fingers to extreme frostbite. Johannesen showed no outward signs of injury but could not stand up. At 23,400 feet, they were too high still for a helicopter rescue. They had no choice but to wait for help to arrive.

Ashley and his guide tethered themselves and their companions to the cliff with ice axes and safety ropes. Ashley unfurled a sleeping bag and wrapped it partially around himself and Johannesen, using it to protect against the wind more than to provide warmth. He held it in place with his gloved hand and the toe of his triple-layer boots. His fingers and toes would also later turn black from frostbite.

Down at Camp II, help was being organized. A group of six Sherpas set off around 6 p.m. with extra oxygen bottles, water and food. Yet the wind worsened, and, according to Outside Magazine, within two hours they were forced to return.

About that same time, with darkness settling in around them, Ashley’s guide decided to go look for help. It was then that he asked if Ashley wanted to come with him.

Ashley had known Johannesen for only a fraction of his life, and they had been romantic partners for just three years. In that short time, though, they had never encountered an issue they couldn’t talk through. They had talked about everything — even this.

“We knew this kind of thing could happen. You climb enough mountains like this, you know,” Ashley said. “And we had talked, and we were like, ‘You know what? If we go, that’s OK. We’re choosing this life.’ Neither of us really wanted to end up 95 and in a nursing home and taking medications and complaining about our pains.

“We just didn’t think it would catch us in this particular stance. We’ve done things more dangerous than this.”

Johannesen told Ashley several times she was glad he was there, he said. Yet as the hours stretched on, she began to drift in and out of consciousness. Then, at about 4 a.m. May 11 — just as the sun was rising — she died in Ashley’s arms.

Somehow, both in pain, Ashley and Tawa Sherpa trudged back to Camp II, where they were airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu. Another group of guides rescued Johannesen’s body before the mountain reclaimed it.

Three weeks have passed since the deadly avalanche on Mount Makalu. Ashley has returned to the couple’s home in a new development in Francis. Surrounded by pasturelands and mountains, it was supposed to be their forever home, he said. They’d even made sure their bedroom was on the main floor so they could comfortably live there when they could no longer climb stairs, much less mountains.

Even here, though, Ashley is keeping his promise. He hasn’t left Johannesen. He keeps the urn holding her ashes in the center of the house on a shrine decorated with photos and candles and vibrant, silk khata scarves. He sets a place for her at the table. He saves her favorite seat in the living room.

He’ll save her a place next to him when he sets off on his next adventure, too. Because the takeaway, if he had to produce one, isn’t to stop climbing mountains or doing hard things. It was in those moments, after all, that Johannesen came alive.

The takeaway, actually, is to not hold back.

“Love with your whole heart,” he said, “because you just don’t know.”

The Wasatch Mountain Club will host a hike in memory of Johannesen on Sunday at 7:40 a.m. The hike will be up Mount Olympus, a 7.1-mile out-and-back with 4,124 feet of elevation gain. Reflective of Johannesen’s spirit of inclusivity, the hike is billed as having “a supportive, inclusive pace — no hiker will be left behind.”

In addition, Ashley has started a GoFundMe fundraising drive to help Johannesen’s guide, Tawa Sherpa, with his medical expenses. As of Tuesday, that fundraiser had reached 99% of its $18,000 goal.