Sophia Bush has experienced love and loss over the years, but one of the most heartbreaking moments came when her ex-boyfriend, Google executive Dan Fredinburg, died during a devastating avalanche on Mount Everest on April 25, 2015.
Fredinburg was just 33 when he died in what became known as the Mount Everest South Base Camp disaster. The avalanche, triggered by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal, claimed at least 22 lives. He suffered a fatal head injury at Base Camp.
Though Bush and Fredinburg had broken up in early 2014 after about a year of dating, they stayed close friends. When he passed, Bush shared a touching tribute on Instagram, calling him "one of the great loves of my life."
"There are no adequate words," she wrote. "Today I find myself attempting to pick up the pieces of my heart that have broken into such tiny shards, I’ll likely never find them all… Dan Fredinburg was one of a kind."
Bush, who has since found love with Ashlyn Harris, went on to describe him as “Fearless. Funny. A dancing robot who liked to ride dinosaurs and chase the sun and envision a better future for the world." "He was one of my favorite human beings on Earth. He was one of the great loves of my life. He was one of my truest friends. He was an incredible brother, a brilliant engineer, and a damn good man," she continued.
Fredinburg lived for adventure, and had even survived a previous avalanche in 2014, when he and Bush were still together, that killed 16 Nepalese guides. Bush was the one who confirmed he was safe at the time.
Even though they were no longer a couple, Bush said they had still made plans for when he got back. “I was so looking forward to our planned download of ‘all the things’ when he got home,” she wrote. “I am crushed that I will never hear that story.”
She also acknowledged the thousands of others grieving: “Disasters like this are often unquantifiable, the enormity is too much to understand.”
The earthquake itself killed nearly 9,000 people and injured over 21,000 across Nepal, India, China, and Bangladesh.