Outdoorsman loved adventure, travel, Montana

Published 12:01 am Sunday, September 4, 2011

Architect and artist. Woodsman and horseman. Adventure traveler and spiritual seeker. Friend, son and brother.

Kevin Von Lossberg was raised in Snohomish County, but found his true home in Montana. By the time he was 30, he had earned an architecture degree from Washington State University and had made close but far-flung friends.

In Montana, he worked in an office for the Kibo Group architecture firm in Missoula, and in the woods for the U.S. Forest Service and the Montana Conservation Corps. Wider travels took him to Alaska’s Bering Sea on a fishing boat, and to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and to a cattle ranch in Argentina.

“He was quite the nomad,” said Rosie O’Hara, a close friend of Von Lossberg’s in Portland, Ore. She met him at WSU in Pullman, where her husband also studied architecture.

O’Hara has a collection of postcards from Von Lossberg’s travels. “He valued his friends so much,” she said. “There was always purpose to his trips. In Belize, he was doing service work. In Mexico and Argentina, there was the opportunity to hone his Spanish,” she said. His friends became vicarious travelers through descriptive letters and journals he shared, O’Hara said.

Kevin Curtis Von Lossberg died Aug. 2 after an accident while on a packing trip in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Since June, he had worked as a packer — on horseback and leading a team of mules — on trips for the 7 Lazy P Deep Canyon Guest Ranch near Choteau, Mont., northwest of Great Falls.

The ranch is owned by Sharon and Chuck Blixrud. “There was just something so special about him. He was a wonderful, wonderful person,” Sharon Blixrud said. His death, reported in The Great Falls Tribune newspaper, happened when a tree burned in Montana’s 1988 fires fell, hitting a mule Von Lossberg was leading, Blixrud said.

“That mule spooked his horse. Kevin ended up on the ground, and he was gone,” Blixrud said. There were 11 people on the trip, seven guests and four crew including Von Lossberg, another packer, a guide and a cook, she said. Blixrud said Von Lossberg was “the kind of help you always want, always willing to learn and do it your way.”

Just days before he was killed, Von Lossberg’s parents, Curt and Dara Von Lossberg of Snohomish visited him in late July.

Although he had just finished a 10-day pack trip, Curt Lossberg said, “he took us out on horseback on his next few days off.” They rode four miles to see a waterfall, a place where they plan to scatter their son’s ashes next spring. “He wanted us to get up there so we could see what he did,” Curt Von Lossberg said.

Along with his parents, Kevin Von Lossberg is survived by his older brother, Bryan Von Lossberg, his younger sister, Alyse Butler, by many beloved relatives and friends, and by his golden retriever, Oso.

He was born in Southern California on April 18, 1981. The family moved to the Lynnwood area when Kevin was 6. He attended Oak Heights Elementary School and Alderwood Middle School. His father said he attended Jackson High School in the Everett School District when it was new, but transferred to Lynnwood High, where he graduated in 1999. He was also in Running Start at Edmonds Community College before going to WSU.

In Missoula, he spent a year with the architecture firm but wanted to work outdoors. He took an AmeriCorps job with the Montana Conservation Corps and worked for the U.S. Forest Service, and also applied to join the Peace Corps.

When at first he wasn’t accepted by the Peace Corps, his father said he taught himself Spanish largely through his travels. “He had just been accepted to Peace Corps. If you’d tell him no, he’d figure out a way to do it,” Curt Von Lossberg said.

“He was the hardest working person I ever met,” Dara Von Lossberg said. “He worked to travel. Fishing in Alaska paid for his trip to Belize.”

One of his last adventures before going to work on the Montana ranch was a three-month stint early this year on a ranch in Argentina. He paid to learn horsemanship, cattle driving and branding.

“He was an incredible man,” said Anthony “A.J.” Edwards, a friend from WSU who also moved to Montana after college. “These adventures kept him floating through life. He really lived life to the fullest,” said Edwards, who now lives in California.

“He was one of the best people I’ve ever known and ever will,” said Anthony Hilario, a roommate of Von Lossberg’s in Missoula. “He absolutely adored this place. He considered Montana his home.”

Hilario said Von Lossberg was a religious man, a Christian who shared his faith by going with a church group to visit young people in detention. “He was never pushy with his religion. Love for God was very personal to him,” Hilario said.

Bob DeSoto, Von Lossberg’s uncle and Dara Von Lossberg’s brother, can’t remember ever seeing his nephew when he wasn’t smiling.

“He was smart as a whip, and also very artistic. That was the perfect combination for becoming an architect, but he also had an adventurous spirit,” said DeSoto, of Costa Mesa, Calif.

“The one thing that we can take comfort in is that he was truly happy, wherever he was,” DeSoto said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.