Dara Lynn Miles

1955 - 2024

Dara Lynn Miles
08/30/1955 - 09/14/2024
Dara Lynn Miles, formerly of Houston and a nonprofit founder, investigative freelance journalist, lawyer, and television news reporter, died September 14, 2024, at her home in Boulder, Colorado, with her loved ones at her bedside. She was 69 years old.
Her death came more than a year after her diagnosis with metastatic pancreatic cancer; a year she spent traveling the world with her family, hiking, kayaking and climbing with her friends, all while undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Boulder. She considered herself lucky to be able to do so much despite her cancer, and she was determined to make the most of her time left.
A month after her terminal diagnosis, Dara started Climb Avy Aware, a Colorado nonprofit corporation, dedicated to increasing Colorado ice climbers' awareness of avalanches and avalanche terrain. In 2019, she had been with a women's ice climbing clinic in Canada when the group was hit by a large avalanche. Dara was uninjured, but one of her climbing partners was buried and killed. That inspired Dara to bring home to Colorado some of the lessons learned in Canada. Climb Avy Aware is now Dara's legacy.
As a freelance investigative journalist, she worked at the New York Times for two years investigating the use of drugs in horseracing, earning a front-page byline--"Mangled Horses, Mamed Jockies."
Outside of her life's work, Dara gave back to her community, including acting as a court appointed advocate for abused children in the Harris County, Texas, foster care system, volunteering for several organizations wherever she lived, and serving as a board member for Boulder Climbing Community and Greenwood Wildlife Rescue.
Dara was born August 30, 1955, in Leavenworth, Kansas, to Lola Ann (Gillespie) Trum and Matthew J. Trum, III. She graduated from Leavenworth High School and began study at the University of Kansas in 1973. Having neither the money nor the self-discipline for college, Dara held a wide variety of jobs, from waitress to delivery driver to bookkeeper, and eventually landed a job at a radio station in Topeka, Kansas. She worked in broadcasting for five years, going from overnight disc jockey and news reader to weekend anchor and weekday "beat" reporter for WIBW-TV. During that time, she went back to college and graduated in December 1983 from Washburn University with a BA in communications and political science, with honors.
On her first day of law school at the University of Kansas, Dara met a fellow student, Robin Miles, who was a year ahead of her and already wise to the ways of law school. She sought Robin out for research advice and exam outlines, and a little romance grew. After she graduated in 1987 and took the Texas Bar Exam, Robin and Dara married in Leavenworth and began their lives together in Houston, having both been recruited by different law firms: Robin at Bracewell & Patterson (as it was then known) and Dara at Baker & Botts. She was a litigation associate there until after the birth of their only child, Miles.
Dara continued practicing law at several other firms, eventually phasing out of full-time employment to turn her attention to her family, volunteering, and endurance sports, where she made many lifetime friends. By the time she retired from endurance races in 2009, Dara had run more than 20 marathons, four 50k trail races and four Ironman Triathlon races-all slowly. She always said she was "built for endurance, not speed."
Robin's career led the family to New York City in 2005, where he helped open Bracewell's New York office and build its energy finance practice. Just before the move, Dara celebrated her 50th birthday with a 6-day women's mountaineering course on Mt. Rainier in Washington. Training for the course meant seeking out the biggest nearby "hill" in Houston-in this case, the Westpark overpass-and hiking it over and over while wearing hot plastic mountaineering boots and carrying a 40-pound pack. Decades later, Dara still recalled the confused looks on Houston motorists' faces.
On Mt. Rainier, Dara was the oldest but not the slowest, even though she suffered from altitude sickness for the four nights the group camped above 9,000 feet. Her inability to sleep had a surprising upside: She was out of the tent at first light and witness to stunning sunrises above the Marine Layer. After summiting, it was clear to Dara that he had no future as a high-altitude mountaineer, but she had acquired a curiosity about ice climbing. Back in New York, she began climbing frozen waterfalls in the Catskills, the Adirondacks and New Hampshire.
Dara loved the chaos and daily spectacle of New York City. She volunteered with the Museum of Natural History, walked shelter dogs at the ASPCA, and made more close friends cycling and running in hilly Central Park. Once their only child started high school, Dara went back to school as well, getting her MS in 2010 from the Columbia University School of Journalism.
As Robin neared retirement age, they bought a home in Boulder, Colorado, where Robin had attended undergraduate school and worked before law school and which they had visited often since their marriage. For several years, Dara split her time between New York and Boulder, but found it hard to be a volunteer for only half a year in either place, and even harder to keep driving their dog, a Great Pyrenees mix, back and forth across the 1,800 miles. Dara relocated to Boulder permanently in 2015, and Robin settled into his role as a United frequent flyer. Once COVID hit, Robin worked remotely from Boulder and the couple settled into a new life together in the foothills of the Rockies.
Dara is survived by her husband of 37 years, Robin Joseph Miles and their child, Miles; two sisters, Judy Arnold (Joe) and Margaret Seifert (Norm Bowers); and dozens of cousins, nieces, nephews and grand-nieces and nephews. She also leaves behind dear friends from Kansas City, Houston, New York and Colorado who shared in her many adventures.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be determined. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Climb Avy Aware, 2950 Island Drive, Boulder, CO, 80301, or at www.climbavyaware.org