Todd Skinner fell 500 feet from the Leaning Tower.

Todd Skinner was rappelling Monday after he and a partner worked on pioneering a new route near Bridalveil Fall, said Adrienne Freeman, a park spokeswoman.

It was not immediately clear why Skinner, who claimed on his Web site to have set climbing records in 26 countries, fell.

“We don’t know whether it was a climbing harness failure or a problem with his equipment or an error,” said Steve Bechtel, Skinner’s former climbing partner and friend. “He’s a larger-than-life climbing hero and it’s a great loss to the entire community of climbers across the world.”

More on Skinner at this discussion board for climbers.

I saw this on the New York Times home page last night and Carolyn Hoffman of RoundTop Ruminations sent me the link, and I saw it wasn’t at GoBlog yet, so that’s why it’s on the ol’ hiking blog this morning.

EDIT: I read more of the comments about Skinner at supertopo.com and it struck me how one post after another talked about how he was upbeat, gung-ho, and never had a bad word for anybody. All-around good guy, in other words. If the measure of a life is the depth of regret at your passing, then Skinner had an especially good one.