Hannah Taylor

1979 - 2018

Hannah Taylor, beloved daughter of Dijit Taylor and the late Jeff Taylor of Hopkinton, died on Saturday, July 21, 2018. Hannah was born in Berlin on June 25, 1979, and was soon joined by the two sisters whom she guided all their lives.

From Berlin, Hannah learned to ski at Wildcat Mountain before the family moved to Hopkinton where she joined a series of championship winning Nordic ski teams. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1998, she attended Middlebury College, where she majored in geography, skied on the Nordic ski team and met her partner, Will Rawstron. Hannah lived in Summit County, Colorado, where she worked as a Nordic ski coach for Summit Nordic Ski Club and was the Managing Director of the Summit Huts Association, providing backcountry hut experiences for skiers and hikers.

She was a thoughtful person with an incandescent spirit. As a dedicated outdoorswoman and athlete, she lived to share such experiences with friends, family and especially the young skiers she coached. Hannah was more than a ski coach to her teams and strove to guide them as people through her values of hard work, integrity, truthfulness, humor and sense of adventure. She believed in making the world ever more beautiful, and her work as a coach was her highest articulation of that belief.

In recent years, Hannah had taken up both ultramarathon running and Adventure Racing with her dearest friends in Colorado. She stated that she simply loved to be out in the mountains, guided by her earlier years in New Hampshire's White Mountains with the Appalachian Mountain Club, and those longer and longer races merely meant more time in the mountains. She ran to gain the time in the wild spaces, not for the adrenalin or glory and was humble, generous, and good-humored about what she called "my brand of crazy."

For all her adventurous spirit and willingness to test her limits, Hannah did not take unnecessary risks – she loved life too well and knew her worth to those who loved her. She fell to her death when a rock came loose as she reached for it during a steep scramble on the Willow Peak Ridge in the Gore Range in Colorado.

All those who knew and loved Hannah are heartbroken by this tragic accident, especially her mother Dijit Taylor of Hopkinton; sister Bethany Taylor of Portland, Maine; sister and brother-in-law Emily Taylor and Alex Ziko of Jackson; her Nana, Betsy Taylor of Marblehead, Mass. and her partner Will Rawstron of Silverthorne, Colo., and their dog, Saco. Her friends and relatives were all touched by her enthusiasm, determination, and love.

Memorial services for Hannah are being held in Summit County, Colorado Thursday, July 26 and on Saturday, August 4, 2018 at 11 a.m. at First Church Hopkinton NH, 1548 Hopkinton Road, Hopkinton N.H. Memorial donations can be made to the Summit Nordic Ski Club, PO Box 1882 Frisco, Colo. 80424.

Her family encourages those who mourn her shocking loss to go for an adventure in the loving, gritty, and graceful manner than defined Hannah.