Mark Byers loved rock climbing. He once told his daughter, 19-year-old Mary Byers, it wasn’t necessarily the challenge that drove him to the sport but the feel of the earth between his hands and feet.
Monday night, the 53-year-old Grover resident was climbing at Crowders Mountain State Park when he slipped, fell and died. As he had done many times in the past, even just days before, Byers went to the park to climb alone, but this time something went wrong.
Byers slipped about three-fourths the way up the mountain. His equipment didn’t catch and he fell nearly 70 feet. Byers died doing something he loved. “It’s something he’s enjoyed his whole life,” Mary Byers said.
Mark Byers began rock climbing with his brothers when he was about 13 years old. The hobby followed him into his adult life. Days before his death, he was celebrating a great feat in rock climbing. He had just climbed one of the harder cliffs of his life.
The avid rock climber had taken to Crowders Mountain to try his hand at the Caterpillar, a section of rock along David’s Castle wall. He successfully reached the top.
When he got home, he was ecstatic. “He was running around the house going, ‘Woot! Woot!,’” Mary Byers said. “He wasn’t one to brag but he was really proud of that.”
Karen Haynes Shaub was a friend and rock climbing buddy of Mark Byers’. Since the weather was getting nicer, she said, he was itching to get out and start climbing. Crowders Mountain was one of his favorite places to go. While he was an enthusiastic climber, he was also a cautious one, she said.
Shaub didn’t believe the news when she heard it was Byers who’d died. “He was a very safe person and good climber,” she said. “He never would take a chance that would have risked his life.”
Byers’ wasn’t just a rock climber, however. He was also a father to Mary Byers, husband to Roxanne Byers and brother to Kerry Byers of Blacksburg, S.C., Althea Smith of Lincolnton and Thomas Byers of St. Augustine, Fla. To Mary, her father was more than a parent.
“We were very close,” she said. “If he wouldn’t have been my father we would’ve been friends.”
Mark Byers’ was funny, caring and outdoorsy, Mary Byers said. “He was such a sweet, humble soul,” Shaub said.
Since her father’s death she’s received many phone calls and Facebook posts and message from her father’s friends. “Everyone got a lot out of him and his life,” Mary Byers said. “He really, truly cared and loved every person.”
You can reach reporter Lauren Baheri at 704-869-1842 or Twitter.com/lbaheri.