‘They wanted everyone to live their best lives’
Hikers who fell to their deaths at Shannon Falls were an inspiration to friends and family
Rose Huet woke up to the news of her friends’ death on Thursday morning, local time in Spain.
A friend had messaged her on Facebook informing her that Ryker Gamble, 30, and Alexey Lyakh, two of her highschool classmates, along with Megan Scraper, someone she had recently collaborated with on a project, had died in a devastating accident this week at Shannon Falls, south of Squamish.
“It was immediate sadness,” Huet said. “I was always so impressed with how they wanted to live their life to the fullest.”
Like thousands of others, Huet was familiar with the travel vlogging her high-school friends were doing which enabled them to visit Europe, South America and Southeast Asia — something she always dreamed of doing.
“I always wanted to travel, but I was always a little scared to actually do it,” she said from a hostel in Spain.
In May, with their encouragement, she decided to live out what she had long hoped to do, and has since been travelling to a number destinations.
It was their mentality of “living life to its fullest” that brought her there. The sudden news of their deaths made her reflect on their time at McRoberts Secondary School in Richmond amid years of life apart.
“Not only were they everyone’s friend, but they were genuinely nice guys to their core and made a point of including everyone. They wanted everyone to live their best lives, even back then,” Huet said. “There wasn’t anybody that was excluded, high school can be cliquey, but not with them.”
In December 2017 a project in partnership with a local magazine brought Huet to collaborate with Megan Scraper as well. Scraper was lovely and helpful and strongly motivated, she said.
“When I found out (Megan and Alexey) were going out, I thought it couldn’t have been more perfect that they were together,” Huet said.
The couple had recently celebrated five years together.
On Tuesday, when the three were walking along the edge of a pool system above Shannon Falls, Scraper slipped — and as Lyakh and Gamble went to help, they fell as well. Rob Mangelsdorf, Gamble’s cousin, said he lived an adventurous life travelling the world but will ultimately be remembered for attempting to help his best friend before he died.
“Even in his final act on this earth he was trying to save the life of his very best friend,” Mangelsdorf said. “He’d known (his friend) his whole life, since they were little, little kids. They were inseparable, absolutely inseparable their whole lives.”
Mangelsdorf said a fourth friend who was on that hike and saw what happened notified Gamble’s mother of the tragic news.
“My understanding is they just went for a hike, they weren’t doing anything silly,” Mangelsdorf said.
Gamble did a prolific amount of volunteer work, that included training youth at a Vancouver boxing facility and helping to raise money for orphaned children.