Linda Weinman with her late husband, Jim Weinman, her late son Jim and son, Bob, 55, of Queensbury in an undated photo.

Jim Weinman was a skilled mountaineer and extreme adventure who grew up in Clifton Park and went missing at age 32 on a solo ice climb in the Andes Mountains on June 3, 2000. His remains were recovered two decades later after global warming accelerated melting of the mountain's glacier. The remains were returned to the family by Chilean authorities last year. (Photo courtesy of Linda Weinman)

Editor's note: Jim Weinman's body has been found in the Andes Mountains, nearly a quarter of a century after he disappeared during a solo ice climb in Chile. This article was published in the Times Union on Aug. 20, 2000, weeks after he disappeared on June 3, 2000.

Three times in a row, a challenging ice face up the southern route of a 14,000-foot peak named Cerro San Francisco in the Andes Mountains outside Santiago, Chile, had defeated Jim Weinman.

The 32-year-old mountaineer and extreme adventurer who grew up in Clifton Park and went to the Northwest in the late-1980s, who lived to climb and climbed to live wanted a fourth go at the glaciated summit in the shadow of the volcano Maipo.

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A year earlier, Weinman and an Australian ice climber had nearly been crushed by a large rock that broke off from San Francisco's icy peak. Another time, Weinman had tried a solo ascent and turned back because the ice was not right. A third time, he'd made a scouting climb in search of a challenging southern route with proper ice conditions.

"He'd done a lot of other peaks in the area and this one just kept beating him,'' said Jim's brother, Bob Weinman, 31, a fellow alpinist. "It got under his skin. He really wanted to finish off San Francisco before he left Chile for good, and he thought he had good ice.''

Ever since their parents introduced the brothers to the Adirondack High Peaks as youngsters, the pair were nearly inseparable adventurers who traveled across North America, South America and Europe in search of new alpine challenges.

Together, they climbed Mt. McKinley (20,320 feet), the highest peak in the United States. Often they packed skis up to the summits of peaks so that they could ski down.

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Mount Hood and Mount Rainier in the rugged Cascade Mountains were their favorite playgrounds during years spent eking out a living to support their alpine sports in the Pacific Northwest.

In May, the brothers climbed a mountain in Brazil named ``The Finger of God.''

The brothers' trademark was their climbing mascot, a Barbie doll they photographed on summits, which earned them a squib in Outside magazine.

Their talk was of the next climb. "We wanted to do a ski ascent of the north face of Everest,'' Bob Weinman recalled recently. "Jim had turned down one Everest expedition........

© Times Union