(Editor's Note: The original email announcement was sent to Lara's professional colleagues. Republished with author's permission.)
Colleagues
It is with great sadness that we report the death of Lara Karena Kellogg on Monday, April 23, 2007. Lara was a consummate athlete and mountain guide, a passion that took her to climb the highest peaks of the world. The tragic accident that took her life occurred while she was on vacation climbing Mt. Wake in Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. She died from injuries sustained in a 1,000-foot fall that occurred while rappelling the technical Northeast Ridge.
In her professional life Lara was a promising young scientist working on fire research projects in collaboration with the Fire and Environmental Research Team (FERA) of the US Forest Service PNW Research Station, located in Fremont. Lara received excellence awards for her work from the USFS, NASA, EPA and the Joint Fire Sciences Program.
Lara first came to the College of Forest Resources in 2000 as an undergraduate student research assistant in GIS and remote sensing in forest fires under the supervision of Ernesto Alvarado. Upon her graduation from the UW Department of Geography in 2001, Lara continued working at CFR as a classified staff member supporting cooperative projects in forest fires between the college and the USFS Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory (PWFSL). She entered the CFR graduate program in Forest Ecosystems Analysis under the direction of Don McKenzie and Dave Peterson and graduated with a Master of Science degree in 2004 with her thesis on Quantifying the Spatial Variability Associated with Historical Low-Severity Fire Regimes in Eastern Washington, USA. Upon finishing her graduate degree, Lara continued at the college as a professional staff research scientist with the same forest fire research group.
Her death is a great loss to our community. She is survived by family members, including her husband Chad. Our condolences to her colleagues, friends, and family.
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B. Bruce Bare
Dean and Professor
Lara Kellogg
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- The breadth of her relationship to us is far reaching, her friendships deep and long lasting. Ever in motion, she lived three lives every day, her broad smile and infectious laughter gracing each moment. She was a natural storyteller, in delivery and in experience, for they were her stories, unembellished. To summarize her would be a travesty of embarrassing proportions; even for those of us who were characters in her stories, our remembrance is but a moment of her rich life. If you live only one life each day, these stories will be a window into an existence extraordinary. Yes, if you were close, if you were acquainted, and even if you never had the opportunity, these stories will help all of us in the years to come, our years without Lara.
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