CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Tuesday, Jul. 31, 2012 10:43PM EDT
A Calgary climber who plunged to his death at a popular hiking spot Sunday is being remembered as an outgoing athlete and avid outdoorsman.
Friends say Ranjit Sidhu, 31, loved rock climbing and excelled in wheelchair basketball as an able-bodied player.
Investigators are trying to determine why Sidhu and his climbing partner, a woman in her 20s, fell to their deaths while rappelling down a rock wall on Heart Mountain, east of Canmore.
The pair fell nearly 100 metres to the ground. It was unclear whether they were tethered to one another, but they appeared to have been hiking with full safety gear.
When Sidhu wasn’t participating in wheelchair basketball competitions, he was hiking and climbing, his friend Lorna Shannon told CTV Calgary.
“He spent a lot of time climbing. We knew that and I'd lecture him that he can’t climb anymore because it would be really bad for his forearms which heed needed for basketball,” she said.
Friends say Sidhu discovered wheelchair basketball while studying kinesiology and fell in love with the sport. He even travelled around the world to cheer on other wheelchair basketball players at the Paralympics and other competitions.
“Everyone can remember his laugh, you could pick him out of a crowd of a hundred people,” Chad Jassman said.
“He was a little goofy sometimes which was always fun. He had a really great smile, he was passionate about everything in life,” Martin Hoare said.
Sidhu is survived by his parents, brother and sister.
With a report by CTV Calgary’s Chris Epp
