Kirk Deeter at Field & Stream reports with a “very heavy heart” that one of his dearest friends and mentors, Charlie Meyers, the outdoors editor for The Denver Post, passed away earlier this week after a brave fight with cancer.

“Always eloquent, always sharp, his work in the paper made him a trusted friend and adviser to millions of outdoors enthusiasts,” Deeter writes. “In person, he was an incredibly gracious man. He was the kind of individual whose presence positively changed the atmosphere in a room as soon as he walked in it.”

Meyers’ last column, about a great fishing spot threatened by toxic sediment, ran in December 2009. Post columnist Woody Paige notes that Meyers was named the country’s number one ski writer a record four years before he decided to move on to writing about fishing and hunting, racking up an impressive number of awards for a variety of stories—from human interest to investigative.

Although his beat changed, Ski Racing calls his importance to the sport “immeasurable.”

Cindy Nelson, the first American woman to win a World Cup downhill says, “He would get frustrated with some of the politics and some of the decisions that were made. That was interesting for me, as a competitor, to see that a press person, outside the sport, cared that much. He marks a great era in our sport, for communicating what happened at a time when we didn’t have the Internet, didn’t have cell phones. We had ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and we had what Charlie printed in the Post.”

Here’s Meyers with fishermen Lefty Kreh and Bob Clouser, discussing their bucket-list fishing spots.