A young man who fell to his death 1/10/2010 from the steep ridge at the back of Makaha valley was a soldier.

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http://www.starbulletin.com/news/breaking/81153657.html

Fire crews recover hiker’s body in Makaha

By Star-Bulletin staff

POSTED: 08:30 a.m. HST, Jan 11, 2010

Firefighters this morning recovered the body of a 28-year-old man who fell about 400 feet to his death from the Waianae Mountains yesterday afternoon.

Fire officials said the man and a fellow hiker had returned to the ridge to retrieve a tent that they had lost. They were rappelling down the ridge when one of them fell toward the Makaha side.

A fire helicopter picked up the second man and brought him off the trail yesterday. However high winds, poor visibility and darkness hampered efforts to recover the body, which had been spotted at 5:00 p.m. several hundred feet below where he was last seen.

“It was located in a steep heavily forested gully that was not easily accessible by helicopter or by foot. From the position of the body and the distance of the fall, it was determined that the hiker could not have survived the fall,” according to a statement from HFD Capt. Robert Main.

Recovery efforts resumed at daybreak and after working for three hours today, Honolulu Fire Department personnel took the body out of the valley at about 9:30 a.m.

A total of 12 firefighters were involved in the recovery mission.

An HFD helicopter dropped off firefighters at a landing zone and they hiked up the steep terrain to the body and carried it back down, which took more than 90 minutes, officials said. The helicopter returned the body to the HFD command center at the Mauna Olu Estates Community Center. Firefighters turned the body over to the Honolulu medical examiner for an autopsy.

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http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=888239

Area soldier, activist killed climbing in Hawaii

Wynantskill man was both passionate, disciplined about life and his beliefs

By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer

First published in print: Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Garland English, a humanitarian from Wynantskill who became an Army platoon leader, died Sunday after falling about 400 feet in a rock climbing accident in Hawaii, where he was stationed, his friends said. He was 28.

English grew up on Oberlook Avenue and graduated from Averill Park High School before attending Columbia University in Manhattan. He was proud of being arrested at political protests, tried his hand at acting and writing poetry and traveled extensively before joining the Army in 2007, which he thought could lead to a career in politics, friends said.

English recently returned from a tour of Iraq.

He and a friend Sunday had returned to a rocky cliff in the remote and rural Makaha Valley near Honululu to try to retrieve a tent one of them dropped days earlier while hiking, said Capt. Terry Seelig of the Honululu Fire Department. English, who had a fearless side, didn’t have enough rope to climb down, and died trying to reach the gear, Seelig said.

High winds stalled a recovery effort for his body in the forested area until Monday, Seelig said.

“There will never be anyone quite like Garland,” English’s close friend and former Manhattan roommate Katharine Jose said. “He was a force of life.”

English was raised in Rensselaer County by his father Reed, and his grandmother would serve him hot meals. He named the Helena M. English Fund after her, a humanitarian organization that raised money to improve the political and health care systems of less fortunate countries. English pledged one-tenth of every paycheck he earned to it.

“He had certain deep beliefs about social justice, conservation and kindness that he tried to put into practice,” said Michael Crowley, a friend who recalled that English never took an elevator down from his 13th-floor dorm room.

English’s father could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Garland English was a military leader who cared about his soldiers. He asked people he knew in the U.S. to write to those under him who didn’t have family, his friend Joanna Siegel recalled. English smuggled five jars of date paste from Iraq and sent them to his friends with individual notes,

“He brought a sort of independent spirit to the military, but he also used it as a tool to gain discipline and experience,” Siegel said. Garland English was interested in cooking and adventure, and he wrote poetry under a pen name. He had exceptional good looks, Siegel said.

Garland worked as a deputy campaign manager for a New York City Council candidate in 2005, when he, Jose and his girlfriend at the time, Gillian Osborne, were featured in a New York Times story about sharing apartment space in the city at a time of high rents.

Garland had been living on Oahu island at the time of his death, but had been discussing buying a farmhouse upstate. Funeral service information could not be obtained late Tuesday.

“He was alive, really and truly alive, in a way that most of us only dream about,” Crowley said.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=888239#ixzz0cVldrIfz