Light snow fell Sunday afternoon on the southeast side of Mount Washington as Boston entrepreneur Norman Priebatsch and his son Seth hiked icy Tuckerman Ravine, an alpine ski mecca in New Hampshire.
Mr. Priebatsch, 67, an adventurer born in South Africa who had skied the ravine many times, declared the sport too dangerous that day with the early thaw. Instead, he led Seth, a 23-year-old wunderkind who had founded social gaming companies, and two of his son’s friends on a hike.
Gazing out over the White Mountains, his companions asked him what was the most spectacular place he had ever seen on his worldwide travels.
“We’re right there now,’’ Mr. Priebatsch replied, according to his son.
Minutes later, Mr. Priebatsch, who was in training to run his 18th Boston Marathon, slipped and slid 20 feet before falling at least 100 feet into a crevasse. Rescuers lowered into the crevasse could descend only 50 feet before the opening narrowed and conditions became too unsafe to continue the search.
At a memorial service Thursday at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Mr. Priebatsch’s family and friends remembered him as a man of boundless energy and keen intellect. His tragic death “leaves a gaping hole in our lives as wide and deep as the ravine itself,’’ said his sister-in-law Ilene Rosenthal.
“Norman left life doing what he passionately loved to do in a place he passionately loved,’’ she said.
Mr. Priebatsch, a 1972 Harvard Business School graduate who lived in the Back Bay, helped found several life science companies. His most recent ventures include the biotech company Adeptrix and Boston-based start-up Tinnix, which is developing a therapy for tinnitus.
Born in Johannesburg to parents who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Mr. Priebatsch was named Norman in honor of the Allies’s landing on the French beaches of Normandy on D-Day, according to his family.
He was in high school in 1960 when South African police opened fire on black protesters, killing dozens in what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Fearing civil unrest, his parents sent him to finish school at Aiglon College in Switzerland, where he also became an expert skier.
Mr. Priebatsch then earned degrees in phsyics and economics in 1967 from Keele University in England.
His brother Robert of Johannesburg said Mr. Priebatsch “loved the gait of life’’ and was “relatively indifferent to the material rewards.’’ He prized challenges and adventure, he said, and possessed an “insatiable curiosity’’ about everything.
His arrival in Boston to study at Harvard was the beginning of an enduring love for the United States, Robert told mourners. “He loved the freedom he found in this country,’’ he said.
Mr. Priebatsch had a strong moral compass, his brother said, and backed the progressive movement in South Africa long before antiapartheid protests became a cause celebre, according to his brother.
Mr. Priebatsch leaves another brother, Charles, who is Robert’s twin and also lives in Johannesburg.
He was married 36 years to Suzanne (Goldstein), whom he met through friends after she graduated from Smith and was working in Boston.
During their four-year courtship, Mr. Priebatsch once built her a heart-shaped yellow box from plastics and covered the box with yellow roses as a gift, because yellow is her favorite color.
“We balanced each other in so many ways,’’ said Suzanne, who is a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley.
Suzanne drew laughter at the service when she recalled how her husband once told guests at their home for Friday night dinner, known as a Shabbat in Judaism, that the meal would “be served at the sound of the smoke alarm.’’
She didn’t fully appreciate the joke until she opened her oven and found smoke billowing out.
Mr. Priebatsch was a devoted father to their son and daughter, she said.
“With both my kids, my wife and I pushed them very hard,’’ Mr. Priebatsch told The New York Times in a profile of his son, Seth, who started his first Internet company, Giftopedia, at age 12, and in 2009 launched the social gaming company SCVNGR, which drew investment from venture capitalists.
Mr. Priebatsch described his parenting style as “invasive, intrusive.’’ He had his children read high-level math, physics, and history books, sometimes turning the books upside down to increase the difficulty.
At the memorial, Seth stood silently at the podium a while, fighting back emotion before he delivered his eulogy at a rapid clip in the hypomanic style attributed to him in news coverage of his company.
He said his father lived by a philosophy he called, “Ask forgiveness, not permission,’’ and encouraged his son to live life unafraid of pushing boundaries.
Mr. Priebatsch, who was a longtime member of Community Boating on the Esplanade, was known to break boathouse rules by windsurfing under the bridge and out into Boston Harbor, his son said.
The boathouse would send staff out in small boats to order him back to the river. Sometimes, Seth would join him in the escape to open sea.
His father countered his rule-breaking with “acts of charity by surprise,’’ he said, such as showing up to do construction at the boathouse.
“My dad managed to live life aggressively and yet remain kind,’’ Seth said. “It’s a level of kindness I’ve never fully understood.’’
When a homeless man came repeatedly to their home on Marlborough Street, Seth watched as his father patiently listened to the man’s story of soliciting for charity or seeking investment in a new business.
Mr. Priebatsch would invariably give the man a generous cash gift. Later, Seth asked his father why he allowed himself to be suckered.
“My dad would smile and say he knew it was all made up,’’ Seth said.
Mr. Priebatsch’s daughter, Daniella, who lives in San Francisco and works for Google, recalled her father’s passion for windsurfing on the Charles River and for biking and running.
He first ran the Boston Marathon at age 50, and he recently told her he was running his age in miles, 67, in one week as part of his current training regimen.
He taught her how to ski at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire when she was a preschooler.
During an early lesson, she told him, “This is fun, but it’s not easy.’’
Her father’s mantra could easily have been if it’s easy, it’s not fun, she said. “My dad truly embodied the adventurous spirit.’’
J.M. Lawrence can be reached at jmlawrence@me.com.