The 22-year-old Calgary woman who died last week on Mount Logan became the youngest climber to ever summit Canada's highest peaks when she reached the top five years ago at the age of 17.

Jessica Aulik was at the 2,865-metre (9,400-foot) mark on the East Ridge May 31 when an avalanche pushed her off the ridge peak and she fell to her death on the mountain in southwest Yukon.

Her 34-year-old climbing partner was Chris Davis, of Fairbanks. He was able to avoid the avalanche.

By the time he descended and reached Aulik, she was dead, though her body was not covered in snow.

'She was a great individual, just full of energy, full of life, just everything going for her,' Dick Flaharty, the owner of an outdoor gear manufacturing business in Fairbanks, said in an interview this morning.

Flaharty's Apocolypse Designs caters to the enthusiasts in Fairbanks and around the world.

And every Thursday at his home, he hosts a get-together of those returning from adventures and those leaving for new ones to swap stories and photos.

Aulik, he said, was a regular.

She had moved to Fairbanks about three years ago and was enrolled in the journalism program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and had just completed two semesters of photo journalism.

Aulik was the kind of person you felt comfortable around from the first moment you met her, Flaharty said.

'And she tried to get out climbing as much as she could.'

Flaharty said Aulik's climbing partner is back in southeast Alaska and is laying low with friends, as he is still quite shaken by the accident.

Aulik died a week ago yesterday, at 7 p.m. She and Davis were not equipped with a satellite radio, and he was not able to get word out until six days later when he flagged down a Trans North helicopter passing Monday afternoon.

The body has been recovered and removed from the mountainside.

Flaharty said many among the climbing fraternity in the Fairbanks area do not take advanced communication equipment on their treks.

It's not a show of bravado, but rather a sense of self-reliance, counting on their own ability to handle situations and their judgment to keep them out of situations they can't handle, he said.

Flaharty said from what he understands, the avalanche came down on top of them and didn't give Aulik much of a chance.

In his 20 years of selling high-end outdoor gear, this is the eighth time he's been called about a friend dying on the mountain.

'It definitely does not get any easier,' he said.

His 20-year-old son has taken to the outback, and he never fails to remind him of the importance of being safe, of knowing the conditions and how to tell, when it is not safe, the importance of coming home.

Acting chief warden Rhonda Markel of Kluane National Park said Tuesday that unusual weather played a role in the avalanche, leaving behind an abnormal build-up of snow on the East Ridge that was also heavier and wetter than normal.

The young climber, who worked as a forest firefighter in Alaska last summer and was planning to return this year to the same job in Denali National Park, was a ball of enthusiasm, by all accounts.

Most recently, she placed first in the open women's category this spring in the annual Arctic Man competition that involves a snowmachine pulling a skier around a course over several hours.

'It is incredibly sad,' Charles Mason, her photo journalism professor, said from Fairbanks this morning. 'I guess she was doing what she loved, but it is pretty sad.

'She smiled constantly ... a little bubble of laughter.'

Mason said while his photo assignments were geared toward newspaper work, Aulik continually pushed her style toward that of an outdoor magazine, though she did it with great enthusiasm.

'If she could find a way to bend it (the assignment) toward the mountains and climbing, that is the way she would bend it, and I enjoyed watching it bend,' said Mason.

She was, he noted, persistent.

Aulik didn't have the required prerequists to get into Mason's class, but he said he finally capitulated because of her insistence that she needed to be there.

It was her dream to work for National Geographic, and Mason doesn't doubt that some day she would have fulfilled that quest.

'The world will be a sadder place without her.'

Four days prior to Aulik's death, a team of three experienced climbers had to be rescued by the longline of helicopter because of nasty weather that almost claimed their lives.

Mount Logan, Canada's highest mountain, measures in at 5,956 metres (19,541 feet), compared to 6,193 metres (20,320 feet) for Denali, the continent's highest peak.