He was a boy set on his father’s adventures, 8 years old and eager to tag along for a steep, rugged, off-trail trek to lakes high in Colorado’s wilderness.

“A brutal hike, huge,” Lance Stark recalls.

He tried explaining this to little Luke. This was no hike for him. “But he wanted to go,” Lance says.

And so the boy went, only to be caught with his dad in a storm, his little boots submerged in a torrential downpour. And yet Luke hardly complained.

Nature would always be in control, brutal sometimes. And as he went along his mountaineering life, Luke would always be open to the uncertainty, open to the possibility of accomplishment and beauty.

And so it was no surprise, into his 20s, that Luke took to the AdAmAn Club.

This was the historic group of his native Colorado Springs, the group that for more than 100 years has climbed Pikes Peak for New Year’s Eve fireworks atop 14,115 feet no matter the often-harsh, wintry elements. Luke had hiked with his dad since 2018. Lance was the “added man” to the membership roster that year, per the annual tradition dating back to 1922.

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But when the AdAmAn Club starts up the mountain Monday, Luke won’t be seen. Instead, he’ll be remembered.

“It’s going to be an emotional roller coaster,” Lance says through tears.

The tears have hardly stopped since June.

From Utah where he was starting his career in civil engineering, Luke was driving home for Father’s Day weekend. He would never arrive.

An accident claimed his life. He was 26.

“It doesn’t feel real,” says his older sister and best friend through more tears, Rachael. “I still will think, I’ll just call Luke really quick. And it’ll hit me, and I’ll remember that I can’t.

“But it’s also been a big motivator for me to just make sure that I tell everyone that I love them. And to do the things that he would have done, and continue doing the things that we enjoyed doing together.”

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Together they enjoyed the AdAmAn hike, hiking along as guests.

Now they are members.

The group made Luke its first posthumous member, the 106th on the historic roster. At the club’s fall banquet where the new member is annually announced, another name was called in an unprecedented move.

“I was bawling my eyes out,” Rachael says.

As was her dad. “It’s an unbelievable honor,” Lance says.

He plans to be by his daughter’s side at the start up the mountain; it’s custom for the new member to lead the way. It will be the start of that “emotional roller coaster,” as Lance said.

But he and Rachael will not be alone — their fellow AdAmAn members and newcomer guests never far.

“They will be there for me, and they have been there, and they will be there for Rach,” Lance says. “And then there will be people going on the climb who’ve never heard of Luke.”

They might learn about a young man whose long hair hinted at his free spirit. About a young man who feared God and seemingly little else. Broken bones and scars hinted at that.

“He was always doing a backflip off something,” Lance says.

Anyone unaware on the AdAmAn hike might learn about a young man who accomplished more than one hopes to accomplish in a much longer life.

By 24, Luke had climbed all of Colorado’s 54 mountains above 14,000 feet. This was while skiing imposing backcountry and competing at national rock climbing competitions on the team at Colorado State University, where his brains became known as much as his brawn.

At his memorial service, his freshman roommate spoke of him staying up until 2 a.m. to help with math homework. That was Luke, always willing to help. During his brief time in Utah, as he was starting his engineering career, he learned about a poor family in need of a car. He got them one.

“No one was beyond his kindness,” wrote his mother, Shelly, in his obituary. “To say Luke Stark will be missed is like saying Pikes Peak is a bump in the road.”

He will be missed but far from forgotten on the AdAmAn hike. Longtime member and family friend Bob Sommers will remember “a selfless leader” and “a guardian, especially above tree line.”

That was Luke on the hike of 2021. As snow pummeled the mountain’s high alpine, a stranger was spotted ahead, clearly unprepared and staggering. When the man fell, Luke ran to him.

“My brother literally gave the guy the shirt off his back,” Rachael remembers. “He was feeding him his food and giving him his layers, and he physically carried him up to the summit.”

Search and rescue retrieved the man there in what was not the first heroic moment for Luke.

“Even before then, on Luke’s first (AdAmAn) hike, I remember a climber was having problems, and Luke was the first guy there,” Sommers says. “He ended up clipping that climber’s pack to his pack.”

There were other serious situations. “And he always took the situation seriously, but not himself,” Sommers says. “He always had a sense of humor.”

Guests have been known to make more New Year’s Eve hikes than Luke before gaining AdAmAn membership. But in leadership discussions this year, “there was never a second thought,” Sommers says. 

And Rachael was similarly deserving, it was decided. “Kit,” Sommers calls her — for her Kit Carson-like skills outdoors.

Just as Luke hiked the fourteeners and competitively rock climbed at Colorado State, so did Rachael. They loved skiing together, almost as much as they loved camping together. There was nothing like a long time in the woods.

“And just getting up at 4 a.m. and just seeing that sunrise,” Rachael says.

That’s what Luke longed for, too. And as much as Rachael longs for another sunrise right beside her brother, “I do feel like he’s with me,” she says.

For the AdAmAn hike, she’ll have his picture. She’ll have a hat he always wore and their matching yellow puffies. She’ll have the company of a club that feels like something more than a club.

“More this year than ever before, it’s not a club,” Lance says. “It’s a family.”

That’ll be all of them at the summit, beneath the fireworks at midnight, beneath the colors that shined bright in the blue eyes of a beloved brother, son and friend.

They’ll catch a ride down the mountain road, down through the initial darkness of a new year. And then the sun will rise.