OBITUARY: DAVID T. PAGE (1968-2026)

David T. Page, devoted husband, father, uncle, brother, and son, and an award-winning journalist, author, and conservation leader, died on July 7, 2026, in a tragic multi-vehicle car crash on Teton Pass in Wyoming. He was 57. His family’s beloved dog and adventure partner, Rio, also died in the crash, with David’s arms encircling her at the end.

David was born September 7, 1968 in Omaha, Nebraska and grew up in Denver, Colo. From his earliest days, the ski slopes and mountains of the Rockies were his playground. With his brother Langdon and sister Priscilla, David was on skis, in a tent, or on the road, on a quest for some kind of epic Western adventure.

He spent a year abroad at Ecolint in Geneva, Switzerland, before graduating at the top of his class at East High School in Denver.  

A man of many trades and with a thirst for further knowledge, David helped build a pumice-crete house for his father Bill and stepmother Claudia after they had moved to rural Northern New Mexico. As a dare against his acute sea sickness, he then moved onto a sailboat near his mother Barbara in Los Angeles. A further self-description: “David Page has run sled dogs into the Maroon Bells, seined for salmon off the Kenai, hunted for T-Rex eggs in Patagonia, and traveled from the Algerian Sahara to Paris in the back of a Belgian floral delivery van.” (DTP, author bio.)

After studying History and Spanish Literature at Dartmouth College, David pursued a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley (landing him in Santiago, Chile), and another in Creative Writing at UC Irvine. From screenplays to short stories to magazine articles and guidebooks, David held fast to the belief that words had the power to change the world: his passion for literature acting as a powerful thrust throughout his life.

In the 2000s, David established himself as an accomplished outdoor and travel writer.  He wrote for the Discovery Channel, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Eastside, Backcountry, Men’s Journal, Skiing, and The New York Times, was a contributing editor at-large for MatadorNetwork.com, editor-in-chief of BETA magazine, and was a longtime senior correspondent for POWDER. 

His critically-acclaimed 2008 Yosemite & the Southern Sierra Nevada: An Explorer’s Guide reflected David’s intimate knowledge and awe of the nooks and crannies of his beloved mountain range, and would successfully go on to three editions. He won several awards for his writing, including BATW’s Best Guidebook of 2010, a 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, OWAC’s 2008 Writer of the Year, and was a finalist for a 2015 National Magazine Award.

His writing combined meticulous reporting with wit, empathy and a deep feeling for landscape. He could explain the psychological forces that lead experienced skiers into dangerous avalanche terrain, introduce readers to the immigrants whose labor quietly sustains mountain communities, and describe a remote slope, a forest in winter, or a beer after a long ski tour, all with equal precision and delight.

David’s seriousness of purpose was balanced by irreverence, playfulness and uncanny humor. At POWDER magazine’s annual ski test, the tall, lanky and generally prudent David could be counted on to arrive in a wig or costume and ski as hard as anyone – especially those 25 years younger.

Spurred by the Yosemite guidebook, David made Mammoth Lakes his home. Mammoth, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada, is “a place of extremes, of measurements and calculations of the sort that help define the edges of what we know.” (DTP) 

The fit for David, wife Allison, and sons Jasper and Beckett was seamless. When he wasn’t hosting epic Halloween parties, or cleaning up after them, David took the family camping. The Pages were easily identified in David’s 1983 Toyota Landcruiser with a 1954 Silver Streak trailer in tow. 

He encouraged his kids to get up at ungodly hours and set them off running free up dunes, into woods, down mountains, and across valleys in search of freedom and connection to beauty and wild spaces.

David also cherished near-daily excursions into his backyard backcountry on skis, ice skates, mountain bikes, or pretty much any non-motorized mode of transport, to glimpse “something else, something nourishing.” (DTP) These trips were not for the faint of heart. What were pitched by David as 2-hour jaunts would quickly become 8-hour epics, at times resulting in tossing the 95-pound dog off a cliff onto Manzanita bushes in order to safely get down. David was one of the most capable humans, especially in untrodden terrain, but his ability to estimate the length of time of excursions forever eluded him. (We all learned to bring snacks, and a high threshold for pain.) 

David was a man of the earth: with deep integrity, boundless energy, easy laughter, and the rare ability to connect with nearly anyone. He was equally comfortable speaking with scientists, policymakers, resort representatives, athletes, immigrant families, conservationists, and strangers he encountered along the way. (Being fluent in Spanish and French, and being able to converse in Arabic didn’t hurt.) 

He was a man who believed people could be better, do more. He held himself and others to a very high standard. “It’s not judgment, or criticism,” he would tell his wife Allison: it was a belief that we, mere mortals, were capable of more, of getting There, of actually reaching the ideal, the dream, the mountain peak, if we just cared and tried hard enough. 

He believed beauty and perfection could be found in almost every thing or action – in a dinner dish, a halloween costume, a campfire, a sentence, a paragraph, a button-down shirt, a ski line, a tree leaf, a sunset, a collaboration.

“The distance between the labored expression of a human being and the synthetic slop of even the most complex algorithm is the distance between a hand-woven Navajo rug and the thousands of cheap, garish textiles hucked hourly out of machines in Southeast Asia to be sold at truckstops across the American West. You can tell the difference. One evokes something essential about what it is to be human; the other is quite useful as protective padding in the moving of furniture.” (DTP, Substack, June 2026)

During Covid, when Mammoth was inundated with tourists, David coined the phrase, “Ski Kind,” which evolved into his personal motto, “Be Kind” – to our fellow human beings and to the land that we live in.

At the time of his death, David was executive director of Winter Wildlands Alliance, a national nonprofit dedicated to protecting America’s wild winter landscapes. He joined the organization as advocacy director in 2016 and became executive director in 2022. His colleagues remember him as a fearless and thoughtful leader who believed that meaningful progress began with curiosity, open dialogue and collaboration. It was characteristic of David that he spent his final day engaged in the work that had become central to his life: protecting the mountains he loved and encouraging people with differing interests to find common ground. 

“The preservation of the world – whatever that means, exactly – has yet to be determined.  In the meantime, the wildness from which it may derive awaits your pleasure…” (DTP) 

David is survived by his wife Allison, sons Jasper and Beckett, his mother Barbara, father Bill and stepmother Claudia, brother Langdon and four nieces.

A celebration of David’s life will be held at Canyon Lodge on Saturday, August 22 from 4-7 p.m. 

In lieu of flowers, the family invites donations to Winter Wildlands Alliance (https://give.winterwildlands.org/a/in-honor-of-david-page), and asks that people honor David by protecting wild places, approaching others with curiosity and kindness, and getting someone they love outside.

For more info, to donate or RSVP, or to share a message or memory, please visit: https://www.online-tribute.com/DavidPage