Brent Raymond made the most out of life.

The 32-year-old former Orillia resident, who travelled the world with an uncanny ability for mountain climbing and outdoor activity, died after falling from a 35-metre high ledge in Yoho National Park along the British Columbia-Alberta border Nov. 19.

Family friend Valerie Powell remembered Raymond as an outdoor enthusiast.

"He just had it in his blood," said Powell, who was told of Raymond’s death by his father Barry, a former Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital physiotherapist, on Saturday. "You wouldn’t expect him to be a super athletic outdoors person."

Yet Raymond had travelled to Chile, Australia, the Grand Canyon and Peru. He even helped raise money for the British Red Cross by scaling some of the United Kingdom’s tallest buildings in 1994, she said.

"He was an incredible person," said Powell.

Raymond owned Alpine Wild, which offered backpacking expeditions to the Peruvian Andes, Mexico and Malaysian Borneo and instructional programs. Raymond first got a taste for adventure while touring the world with his family for more than a year when he was a boy, she said.

Powell said Raymond’s father was distraught but understanding about the accident.

"(He) was very distraught," she said. "But he did say we all knew he was in a high-risk lifestyle and career. There was that knowledge that they knew the dangers of everything he did."

Raymond was with his 26-year-old friend on Mount Dennis. The pair were traversing the approach of a climb known as the Carlsberg Column, when Raymond fell around 9 a.m.

"He slipped and fell and slid over the cliff and sustained life-threatening-injuries from that fall," said Percy Woods, public safety warden for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay national parks.

The force of the fall shattered Raymond’s helmet, said Const. Mike Mercier of the Golden RCMP.

He was taken to Yoho Ranch where paramedics from Banff were waiting, and then was flown to Calgary’s Foothills Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Raymond was born in Australia and was employed as a part-time guide by Yamnuska Inc., a Canmore-based mountaineering school.

Friends of Raymond can post messages at www.rememberingbrent.com [corrected], a website created by his brother Duane.

— with files from CP