Any mountain climbers on the forum?
The body of a famous mountain climber -- Alex Lowe -- has been recovered after being missing for almost 17 years:
![[Image: alex-lowe-and-anker_h.jpg?itok=FCA7AnN_]](http://www.outsideonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/three-quarter-page-scaled-1x/public/alex-lowe-and-anker_h.jpg?itok=FCA7AnN_)
More on this interesting fellow here:
![[Image: BI-2109H.jpg]](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000pxBUNsIvsuE/fit=1000x750/BI-2109H.jpg)
How does one even develop a passion like mountain climbing? Seems like the sort of thing a man dreams about when he's wistfully reminiscing about his own youth, wondering what he could have done differently with his own strength, vigor and passion.
I admire such men as they have an indomitable passion, iron will and, frankly, balls a white-collar desk jockey like me will never have. I wonder what a man really finds out there, nary a strong gust of wind or misplaced foot away from death, and how it changes you.
Regardless, it is quite the story. Such driven individuals usually do consume themselves -- either through burning a candle at both ends in life or, as here, taunting fate by chasing the outer limits of human experience. R.I.P.
The body of a famous mountain climber -- Alex Lowe -- has been recovered after being missing for almost 17 years:
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He was regarded as one of the greatest mountaineers of the modern era, lost in an ice avalanche on Shishapangma, in Tibet, 16 years ago. Now the body of the American climber Alex Lowe, aged 40 when he died, has finally been found along with that of his climbing companion, 29-year old cameraman David Bridges, also American.
Fittingly perhaps, the bodies were discovered by the Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck – regarded as one of the the world’s best current mountaineers – and his companion David Goettler, while acclimatising for an attempt on the south face of the 8,031metre-high (26,350ft) Shishapangma. The find brings closure to the lingering tragedy of their deaths on the world’s 14th highest mountain.
Lowe and Bridges had been on the mountain as part of nine-person team when they got lost on a 1999 expedition, which planned to first climb Shishapangma and then descend it on skis, in what they hoped would be the first US ski descent of an 8,000m peak. The two were buried and killed when an ice cliff collapsed above them as they crossed a glacier, with a third companion, Conrad Anker – whose exploits were documented in the recent film Meru – surviving. Anker suffered broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder.
At the time of his death Lowe was regarded as one on the best in his field – not least for his extraordinary physiological gifts at altitude, which earned him the nickname the “Lung on Legs” and “the Mutant”. As the writer and climber Jim Perrin noted in his obituary for the Guardian, Lowe was not only supremely physically gifted, with a slew of hard ascents under his belt, but also an early adopter of using the internet to publicise his climbs.
“One significant factor in Lowe’s rise to worldwide fame,” wrote Perrin, “was his mastery of the internet technology that has allowed certain kinds of climbs to be photographed and marketed. “Climbing has thus become interesting to a broader segment of the population, and some companies unconnected with the activity are using it as part of their marketing images.”
Lowe, from Bozeman, Montana, had made difficult climbs all over the world, including Nepal’s Kwangde and Kusum Kanguru, and twice reached the summit of Mount Everest. In Peru, he climbed the south-west buttress of Taulliraju.
Familiar with the risks of high-end mountaineering, he had been involved in the high-profile rescue of a group of trapped Spanish climbers on Denali, the highest peak in the US, four years before his death, carrying the stricken climbers on his back during the rescue. Lowe, as Perrin wrote, downplayed his role. “It was one of those things you do because you have to do it, one of those Herculean things where you get a lot of adrenaline going and you just do it.”
Confirmation of the discovery of Lowe and Bridges, came in a statement from Lowe’s widow, Jennifer, now married to his friend Anker. She said Steck and Gottlieb had discovered the remains of two people in a partially melted glacier and described the details of their clothing and backpacks to her.
“Alex and David vanished, were captured and frozen in time. Sixteen years of life has been lived and now they are found. We are thankful,” Jenni Lowe-Anker said. In the last paragraph of her memoir, Forget Me Not, Lowe-Anker had predicted a day would come when her former husband’s body would be found. “Alex will melt out of the glacier one day … and I do not look forward to it.”
In the statement, released by the charitable foundation founded in Lowe’s name, she added: “Alex’s parents are thankful to know that their son’s body has been found and that Conrad, the boys and I will make our pilgrimage to Shishapangma. It is time to put Alex to rest.”
Anker also said the discovery has brought closure and relief to him. He told Outside magazine that although he had not seen photos of the remains, he was convinced they are those of Lowe and Bridges. “They were close to each other. Blue and red North Face backpacks. Yellow Koflach [mountaineering] boots. It was all that gear from that time period. They were pretty much the only two climbers who were there.”
Bridges, 29, of Aspen, Colorado, was an accomplished high-altitude climber and cinematographer.
More on this interesting fellow here:
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Though more than 16 years have passed, the memory of Alex, who inspired a whole generation of climbers and explorers with his uncontainable enthusiasm, legendary training routines, and significant ascents of rock climbs, ice climbs, and mountains all over the world, live on through many of Lowe’s more famous quips.
“The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun,” he routinely declared.
He also once said, “There are two kinds of climbers: Those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.”
As mountaineering’s era of exploration and first-ascent peak bagging came to a close, climbers became much more specialized: pushing limits on the rock or on technical ice climbs or in the mountains. But they weren’t often so adept at all three. Lowe was the consummate all-arounder. No matter what the climb’s medium, no matter how difficult or dangerous it was, it seemed that if there was one person in the world who could get up that climb, it was Alex Lowe.
“”We’re all at this one level,” Anker once observed. “And then there’s Alex.”
In the 1980s, he flashed (meaning, he climbed it on his first try) the Supercrack of the Shawangunks in New York at a time when the route was still considered one of the hardest in the U.S. In Colorado, he nabbed the first ascent of the Fang, a perilous 120-foot free-standing column of ice in Vail, Colorado.
He was a true exploratory climber, who completed significant first ascents of two important, technical mountains: Rakekniven Peak in Antarctica (1997) and Great Sail Peak in Baffin Island (1998), considered the most remote big-wall on Earth. In 1999, he joined Jared Ogden and Mark Synnott on a first ascent on the northwest face of Great Trango Tower, in Pakistan. This expedition was in part significant in that it was broadcast on this new thing called the Internet using emerging satellite technology—a precursor to expeditions today.
Lowe was a compulsive exercise fiend. His friends confirmed that he would do between 400 and 1,000 strict pull-ups every day, usually in sets of 50 at a time, no matter where he was, even at airports. During an expedition to Antarctica, he dug out a snow pit, placed his ski across the top of the pit, and used the ski to perform his daily pull-up ritual, all during a full-blown storm.
He was nicknamed the “Lungs With Legs” and “The Mutant” for his unstoppable endurance and stamina at altitude. In June 1995, he aided the National Park Service with a high-altitude rescue on Denali. Four Spanish climbers had been trapped for four days at 19,200 feet and were dangerously hypothermic. One of the climbers, in fact, tumbled to his death before help could arrive. A military helicopter airlifted Lowe and several other climbers to a plateau just above the Spaniards. Lowe kicked into high gear, single handedly carrying one of the climbers on his back, as the climber was too frostbitten to move. It was the speed with which he was able to carry the climber, and at such an altitude, that gave Lowe this aura of being a real-life superhero.
Yet he never bragged, never boasted, and often never even fully revealed the mind-blowing magnitude of his daily solo missions in the mountains. He might say something casual, like how he had a “fun day of climbing,” and only when he was pressed would he reveal that, in fact, he had done something truly significant, such as completing the Grand Traverse of the entire Teton range in under 9 hours when the former record was 20. In sneakers too.
According to Anker, one of Lowe’s proudest achievements was never really given its due.
After guiding some clients on Mount Everest in 1990—Lowe spent a brief stint working as one of the first commercial guides on Everest, under the tutelage of Todd Burleson at Alpine Ascents International—Lowe headed over to an adjacent 6,000-meter peak in Nepal called Kusum Kanguru. Climbing in full alpine style, he soloed a first ascent on the north face of the mountain, descended via the south side, and then had to hike up and over a high-mountain pass in order to return to the village of Lukla.
“It was never reported because he didn’t have a permit,” says Anker. “But it seemed like this was a significant climb for him.”
Beyond all these legendary stories, beyond all the first ascents, the real gift of Alex Lowe was his indomitable spirit and his true passion for just being in the mountains and having fun, even in dire circumstances. For example, during an ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, he blew out his climbing shoe. But instead of going down, he simply smiled and completed the climb by wearing the shoe backwards.
Another time, Lowe was ice climbing in Hyalite Canyon, outside of his home in Bozeman, Montana, when the icicle snapped, causing Lowe to fall 40 feet. During the fall, his ice axe gouged a pancake-size flap of skin in his scalp, revealing his skull.
“We kinda taped the scalp back into place,” said Lowe in a subsequent interview, “and put a hat on, and taped around the hat, and started skiing out. We knew it was time to go to the ER. But we also knew it was going to be a long evening there, so we stopped down at the coffee shop and got lattes. It was great.”
More than 16 years after the climbing world lost two greats, after Conrad Anker saw his friends vanish in a cloud of snow, they’ve finally reappeared. For the families, this discovery has been a chance for closure. For the rest of us, it’s been an opportunity to celebrate, once again, two legends.
How does one even develop a passion like mountain climbing? Seems like the sort of thing a man dreams about when he's wistfully reminiscing about his own youth, wondering what he could have done differently with his own strength, vigor and passion.
I admire such men as they have an indomitable passion, iron will and, frankly, balls a white-collar desk jockey like me will never have. I wonder what a man really finds out there, nary a strong gust of wind or misplaced foot away from death, and how it changes you.
Regardless, it is quite the story. Such driven individuals usually do consume themselves -- either through burning a candle at both ends in life or, as here, taunting fate by chasing the outer limits of human experience. R.I.P.
![[Image: 12bK4IN.jpg?1]](http://i.imgur.com/12bK4IN.jpg?1)
