‘Devastated’: Mother remembers son who died hiking Mt. Pugh

Published 11:00 am Saturday, June 13, 2026

EVERETT — Alex Keen was known by his loved ones as a curious adventurer.

From a young age, the Duvall native begged to be in the driver’s seat of anything with wheels and kept his eyes to the sky for passing planes, his family said.

Keen went bungee jumping in foreign countries, climbed peaks for the challenge, snowboarded down the slopes of Steven’s Pass and earned a pilots license on the runways of Snohomish.

His ambitious spirit and love of outdoors led Keen to Mt. Pugh east of Darrington on May 9.

On his only day off from work, the 34-year-old planned a solo summit of the 7,000-foot mountain in the North Cascades.

“He was really looking forward to it,” said Shelly Keen, Alex Keen’s mom. “He knew what he was going for, he was going for something hard.”

Three days later, search and rescue crews recovered Alex Keen’s body, 800 feet below where his hiking gear was found the day before.

“He’s just too young to be gone,” Shelly Keen said. “We’re devastated.”

Shelly Keen continues to ache from the loss of her only child.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when the shock wears off,” she said through tears. “I just miss him so much.”

Alex Keen’s passion for adventure was matched only by his love for supporting others. He served as a youth group leader at his church in Duvall before going on to work as a missionary in China, teaching English as a second language.

“He helped (people) through tough times, he learned how to council people,” said Karin Clemetson, Alex Keen’s aunt.

Along every stop of his life’s journey, he found a thrill in experiencing the unknown.

“He was very interested in continuing to learn something new and learn something hard,” Clemetson said. “There just wasn’t anything he wasn’t willing to try.”

The unimaginable loss at such a young age prompted a wave of community support.

A GoFundMe for his memorial has raised more than $30,000 in about a month, but Shelly Keen said it’s the memories of her son that are truly priceless.

“The stories from his friends, who he’s had since he was in elementary school and his coworkers at Skydive Snohomish and the search and rescue teams who shared part of his life,” Shelly Keen said. “Just hearing their stories, I don’t know if healing is the word, it’s just really been uplifting. It keeps him alive.”

Skydive Snohomish, where Alex Keen worked flying countless people to the jump of a lifetime over the skydive center at Harvey Field, has provided a setting for the Keen family to process their grief.

On May 24, a day that would’ve been Alex Keen’s 35th birthday, hundreds of people gathered for a memorial jump paying tribute to a life lost too soon.

“There were people there for Alex, and I think people there that didn’t know him, but through the stories of what was happening that day, they just simply stayed,” Shelly Keen said. “It was beautiful.”

Roses were dropped from an airplane and so were people, dozens of them, including some of Alex Keen’s lifelong friends and his mom.

Shelly Keen said she’d jumped from a plane with her son before as a birthday gift.

“You open the card that says, ‘You’re going to go skydiving, mom.’ You don’t return that, you go,” she said.

The pair had been planning to make a second jump as a joint birthday celebration. Instead, Shelly Keen made the leap in honor of her son, alongside many of his friends and colleagues.

“This time I had no fear,” Shelly Keen said. “I knew I was going to do it.”

Among those who attended to celebrate Alex Keen were members of the local search and rescue teams who helped recover his body from Mt. Pugh.

Volunteer crews raced against time and weather during a three-day search for the missing hiker. Ultimately, mountaineering teams were dropped in by helicopter and scaled down the side of a steep gully to recover Alex Keen’s remains.

“My heart goes out to them, they’re above and beyond any expectation,” Shelly Keen said. “People give up their family, their work, their life, whatever is going on, to help you. They’ll spend the night, they’ll spend days and I got to witness that and that was the most incredible thing.”

Shelly Keen said she thanked every single one of them.

A portion of the memorial GoFundMe for Alex Keen will be donated to Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue, she said. A small token of gratitude for the group that answered the call when tragedy struck.

“It’s just having him back,” Shelly Keen said. “If we couldn’t have him alive, just having him back was everything.”

A celebration of life for Alex Keen, including a flyover and a jump in his honor, is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at Harvey Airfield.

Ian Davis-Leonard: 425-339-3097; ian.davis-leonard@heraldnet.com