NEWS OF ABSOLON'S DEATH spread across town like a stain, then all over the country. A week later, under lowering skies, more than 300 people streamed into a meadow near Sinks Canyon—a popular sport-climbing hub near Lander—for a memorial service. They all had Pete Absolon stories to tell, gleaned from what had been a full and remarkable life.

There were rock-climbing buddies from his early days as a guide at Seneca Rocks, West Virginia; tales of Mount McKinley's West Rib and big ice in Alberta; former NOLS students and staff who'd had life-changing encounters with Pete; people who'd met him climbing, biking, or elk hunting; and local parents who simply knew him as an enthusiastic dad, deeply involved in his daughter's school activities. Nobody could figure out how he made it all look so easy.

Lander-based NOLS instructor Gary Wilmot was once saved from serious injury by Absolon, who snatched him by the boot after he stumbled and slid headfirst down an icy gully outside of Cody, headed for a cliff. But he considers such heroics the least of his friend's accomplishments. "Pete was a very good rock climber, an exceptional ice climber and mountaineer," he says. "Maybe not world-class at any of these things, but there are very few climbers who put them all together as well as Pete did. He could always keep the rope moving up, and he got his students to believe they could make certain ascents and achieve goals far beyond what they thought they could do."

Born in Minnesota, raised in Texas and Maryland, as a teenager Absolon went from Boy Scout hikes to hanging out at the Gendarme, the legendary climbing shop at Seneca Rocks. He persuaded proprietor John Markwell to hire him as a guide and began putting up bold new solo routes. "Many of Pete's routes are thinly protected and just scary," says Topper Wilson, another Gendarme alum, now living in Colorado. "But his legs never shook. When he got nervous, he'd start muttering and talk his way through."

In 1986, while soloing at Seneca Rocks, Absolon came across 25-year-old Molly Armbrecht, a Yale graduate and climber who worked for the nearby Woodlands Mountain Institute. Absolon informed Armbrecht that she and a companion weren't on the route they thought they were on. Armbrecht insisted she knew what she was doing. Molly and her friend pressed on, got lost, found their way down around midnight, and slinked past the Gendarme, where Absolon sat with his pals, watching with amusement.

The wedding came two years later, on top of the highest mountain in West Virginia. The couple moved to Berkeley, then Lander, where Pete took a NOLS instructor course and began working for the school. He called the place Blander at first but soon fell in love with it. At NOLS, Absolon emerged as a quiet but vital presence whose high spirits and people skills made him a valuable field instructor and administrator. Fatherhood compelled him to give up major expeditions, but he set up a swing for Avery at the base of Killer Cave, one of his favorite routes in Sinks Canyon, and continued to seek new adventures. He was always methodical and safety conscious—which made his sudden death an even greater shock.

The Lander community was still reeling from other fatalities, including the 2006 death of Todd Skinner, one of the area's most celebrated free climbers, who died after his harness failed in Yosemite. But Absolon's death was fundamentally different—not an equipment failure but a rock, thrown by a clueless hiker—and it sparked anger as well as grief.

"Pete was an extremely conservative and accomplished climber who was doing everything right," says Phil Powers, executive director of the American Alpine Club and a NOLS staffer in Lander for nearly 20 years. "Climbers sign up for a certain amount of risk. But Pete didn't sign up for this kind of risk."

In the days before and after the service, reminiscences about Absolon piled up in a long-running thread on SuperTopo.com, a popular climbers' Web site. "He had serenity in his life," wrote Pete's oldest sister, Mary, "and we are all the better for this because it is a whole lot more fun being with someone who is living out their passions!" But the tragedy also prompted a more vitriolic thread, in which people described their own near-death encounters with rock throwers. Some pointed out that climbers cast plenty of stones themselves—not just to clean a route but for the gravitational fun of it. "Everyone who's never thrown a rock off a cliff, raise your hand," wrote one poster. "Gee, there are no hands up." Climbers even have a word for the pastime: trundling.

"Pete enjoyed trundling rocks," says Wilson, "but he always looked first."

Experienced climbers know to look carefully before they roll any rock, and the type of accident that killed Absolon is exceedingly rare. Falling objects are the third-most-common cause of climbing injuries, according to data compiled by the American Alpine Club for its annual publication Accidents in North American Mountaineering. But Jed Williamson, the series's managing editor, says that most accidents occur as a result of naturally falling rock and that, of some 625 reported deaths and injuries involving falling objects since 1951, only a handful resulted from rocks being thrown.

The worst case on record was a 1994 trundling incident that set off a 50-ton rockslide down the north face of 12,799-foot Granite Peak, Montana's tallest mountain. The three young climbers who did it apparently thought there wouldn't be a problem, because the north face was a difficult, less-used approach to the summit. Unfortunately, climber Tony Rich, 33, happened to be in the path of their barrage and was killed. The three were charged with negligent endangerment and received a combination of fines, community service, and jail time.

A few days after Absolon's memorial service, Fremont County district attorney Ed Newell announced that he would not file charges against Rodolph. As he saw it, this case was better suited to possible civil litigation than criminal charges. Yet he was careful not to describe Absolon's death as an accident.

"It was criminally negligent or reckless to throw the rock without first checking if anyone was below," he said. But there was no evidence that Rodolph intended harm; he simply didn't know Absolon was there. In addition, Newell noted, Rodolph had taken responsibility immediately, had been cooperative with authorities, had no prior record, and was a military veteran.

The decision distressed many of Absolon's friends. Powers believes that trundling injuries are often dealt with lightly because they happen in remote areas, but in his view that's precisely what makes them so dangerous. "If the argument is that this kind of thing happens because Pete was involved in a risk-taker's sport in a less civilized place, then I push back on both fronts," he says. "Yes, the rules are different in the backcountry: One's personal responsibility is heightened, not diminished. The frivolous tossing of a rock is even more irresponsible in the wilderness because the repercussions can be so much greater."