A Climber We Lost: Stewart M. Green

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

Stewart M. Green, the “Fred Beckey of adventure guides,” embarked on his final adventure on June 4. He was 71.

Green provided legions of climbers with routes to climb, but his books and photos will be his enduring legacy. Green penned and photographed some 45 to 70 books (the precise count is unknown). You may have gotten his beta in Rock Climbing Colorado with its 1,800+ routes, or Rock Climb New England, Best Climbs Moab, or Rock Climbing Europe, to cite just a few of his works. You may not be familiar with his Best Easy Day Hikes Phoenix, Best Lake Hikes Colorado, Scenic Driving Arizona or Scenic Driving California’s Pacific Coast—Green wrote and photographed outside the climbing world perhaps even more than he did within it.

A freelance writer and photographer since 1977, Green was steeped in an old-school work ethic and stayed the course. He did much of the research for his books himself, often climbing most of the routes in his guides, especially the ones covering his home turf around Colorado Springs. For his book on the Pacific Coast he drove the route four times and took 20,000 photos. For Scenic Driving Arizona he logged 10,000 miles. His last book, Best Easy Day Hikes Phoenix, was published in September.

“Stewart [had a] dedication to the reader, a need to provide reliable and useful information,” says Max Phelps, Green’s longtime editor at the publishing house Globe Pequot/Falcon Guides. “I was often left marveling at his energy, unwillingness to compromise on the quality of his work, and the many miles of hiking and driving.”

One of Green’s more recent books Hiking Waterfalls Utah, sold out before it was even in shops. “I was looking forward to sharing the news of early success for this book with Stewart,” says Phelps. “For most authors, it would be good for bragging rights, but boasting was not in his nature.”

At tradeshows Stewart’s popularity was evidenced by the long lines to get his signature on his books.

As an editor for Climbing, and then Rock and Ice and Ascent, I kept Green flagged in a Rolodex as a first call for when we needed a desert or mountain landscape or a photo of just about any route, old or new. Looking for a pic of Indian Creek’s Supercrack? Green had it. He was in fact there in 1976 photographing his buddies Ed Webster, Earl Wiggins, and Bryan Becker as they made the first ascent of the iconic route.

“[Green] rode shotgun, documenting climbing because of his love of climbing and photography,” says David Clifford, former Rock and Ice photo editor. “He earned his spot on the front lines of climbing history with his easygoing nature, and his ability to capture it all in a frame that was authentic.”

Green would say that he was a “Street photographer at heart, walking with a camera and grabbing shots as life happens on the avenue of life.”

Stewart Green came of climbing age in the early 1970s, and led a robust and inquisitive life. Unlike most climbers of the ‘70s, Green steered away from brickweed and drink. Also unlike most climbers who only locked on climbing, Green was a Renaissance man. He loved art, history (including that of Captain Jack, who was actually a woman), studied the geology, flora and fauna of the places he visited and happily shared the details. He had a degree in anthropology/archeology and wrote the book Rock Art: The Meanings and Myths Behind Ancient Ruins In the Southwest and Beyond. His homepage photo on Facebook isn’t a climbing pic, but one of a marble fountain in the Piazza Navona, Rome, taken during a nine-day trip to Italy, his first time there, just last February.

Jimmie Dunn met Green in the 1960s and they remained tight. They met bouldering. “He was impressed because I was the only person who could do the problems he could do,” says Dunn. “We called him ‘Stretch’ because when he was young he was so skinny that when he turned sideways you could barely see him.”

Dunn recalls a trip to the desert southwest in 1971 when he, Green, and Billy Westbay made the first ascent of Castleton’s West Face (5.11) the sixth or seventh ascent in total of a tower that today has seen over 80,000 ascents. Earl Wiggins noted that the West Face was “one of the hardest desert climbs of the era.” Green, on his blog, wrote that the “Three of us felt privileged to climb that proud tower and stand alone on its sky-island summit, surrounded by the untrodden red rock desert …”

On that desert excursion the three climbers also made the third ascent of Standing Rock and the fifth ascent of North Six Shooter Peak.

All, however, didn’t go smoothly. On the drive back home to Colorado, Stewart’s 1963 VW bug broke down on the road from Castle Valley to Cisco, Utah, a dirt track that at the time was impassable after even a light rain. “It was September, hot,” says Dunn. “Nobody was around, no cars, just an eagle soaring across the desert.”

Popping the hood, they found that the pulley wheel had broken on the bug’s air-cooled engine. Lacking tools, they used a piton and hammer to get the nut off the pulley, freeing it so they could get a matching part. But from where?

They walked in a beeline across the desert “six or seven miles” to Cisco—a ghost town today— from there they hitchhiked 50 miles to Grand Junction, scored a replacement pulley, and returned to repair Green’s German machine.

Decades rolled on and Green became an elder statesman who was passionate about the future of climbing, access, and the environment. “He talked about why climbers should not be able to do whatever we want in the National Parks,” says Dunn. “He said that if we can do absolutely anything, then anyone can do anything including dirt bikers and paint ballers. He wanted us to go by the rules and not ruin it.”

At the time of his passing Green was working on his memoirs. I hope that someone completes the project for him so we can all read about his adventures. Green was a colorful cat with a quiet charisma, Buddha like, and like The Enlightened One he remained a bit of a mystery.

“He could be elbow to elbow with you as a buddy,” says Henry Barber, “but he’d never tell you that he’d done anything. He was almost embarrassingly humble. If you mentioned anything he’d done he’d get red in the face and shrink back.”

I imagine that Stewart is now out there somewhere, getting up early to capture the morning light, staying for the golden hour of sunset, snapping pics and writing away about the magnificence he’d witnessed. I do look forward to reading his next book, though not anytime too soon, please: Best Climbs, The Galaxy.

Green is survived by his son Ian and daughter Aubrey.

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

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