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A year ago today, an avalanche on Tibet’s 26,291-foot Shishapangma took the life of
world-renowned mountaineer Alex Lowe.
You probably remember the accident. The Montanan was eulogized on the evening news and in such
wide-ranging publications as National Geographic Magazine, the New York Times, and
the Chicago Tribune. And you probably remember the accolades: Gone is the world’s
best climber.
But you may not know he wasn’t comfortable with the title. Friends teasingly praised his
peerless talent just to watch him squirm. The jab was subtle. Elite climbing is more a way of
life than a sport, and talk of who’s best is derided as missing the point. But with Alex,
whose contagious energy changed both climbing and climbers, the label seems to stick.
Redefining the sport
First, his resume: Everest twice, and difficult ascents in Peru, Nepal, Antarctica, Alaska, and
Canada. He climbed the hardest routes on Yosemite’s El Capitan. And he almost
single-handedly redefined what is possible on steep ice, finessing his way up barely-there
frozen waterfalls that are little more than wisps of ice plastered on overhanging rock.
Then there are his other feats, part mountaineering and part superhero, comic-book fare. He
once piggybacked an injured climber 1,000 feet up Alaska’s mighty Denali to a waiting
helicopter. He blazed up and over Wyoming’s Teton Range, climbing seven peaks and lapping
up 12,300 feet of elevation gain in just over eight hours.
But perhaps his proudest moment occurred in the months before his death, at a less-than-breakneck pace, on a peak he’d climbed more than 100 times. Sandwiched between expeditions, he again climbed Grand Teton. Only this time his partner was his eldest son Max.
Most meaningful climb
Lowe told a reporter he didn’t push his son, waiting instead for the 10-year-old to show a
spark of interest. For Lowe, who spent his boyhood tromping through the Montana wilderness with
his father, and who first fell in love with climbing while clambering up a backcountry spire in
sneakers, that spark meant everything. It comes from exploring, seeing a peak for the
first time, or trudging back to camp exhausted and elated after a big day. And he didn’t
want it all to himself.
“He was one of the most driven people I’ve ever met, but he could slow down and talk
with anyone,” said Gordon Wiltsie, a longtime climber and professional photographer who
shared a rope with Lowe in Antarctica and Canada’s remote Baffin Island. “He
didn’t suffer fools easily, but if you approached the mountains sensibly and with a good
spirit, he was great.”
Superhuman stamina
He did have his quirks, though. A self-admitted exercise addict, he often stormed through the
door at 7 a.m. after getting up four hours earlier to ski fresh powder. Later, it was off to
the gym, where he’d hog the pull-up bar to knock out 400 pull-ups in sets of 40 and 45. He
abhorred downtime. He knew where to do pull-ups in many airports.
Even on expeditions, when rest is hard to come by and much appreciated, Lowe was an
oddball. He’d cop pull-ups on a ship’s rigging en route to Antarctica, or do dips
in a snow pit he dug at base camp.
“At Baffin Island, after hauling supplies to a high point on a climb, we went back to camp
beat and tired, but Alex proceeded to do pull-up after pull-up,” Wiltsie said. “He
even brought an exercise device on climbs.”
Aerobically, he was born with lungs designed to fell mountains. According to
Climbing magazine, his VO2 max was in the high 60’s, while the average male only
uses between 35 to 50 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram body weight per minute.
Olympic caliber fitness and relentless training don’t mean much in the mountains without
good judgement and plain old intuition—a visceral touch called mountain sense. Lowe had
it.
He loved and respected the mountains
“He had so much experience and technical ability that he could do amazing things in amazing
bursts of energy,” Wiltsie said. “But—and this is important—he knew when to
back off. He wasn’t killed because he pushed it too much. He was killed by a random act of
the mountain—kind of like when you meet a semi at a stoplight, you expect it to
stop—but every once in a while it doesn’t.”
Unlike some hard-core climbers, Lowe was at home away from the mountains. He was a family man.
He was intelligent, well read, and inquisitive. And in recent years, Lowe had begun to fuse his
love of the mountains with his love of people. Through slide shows and his spot on The North
Face climbing team, he was slowly becoming America’s ambassador of the mountains.
It was a natural transition. Although his talent placed him in a class by himself, he was
gregarious and approachable at heart, always quick with a smile and encouraging word.
“He almost loved communicating his love for the mountains as much as the mountains
themselves,” Wiltsie said.
Synonymous with climbing
So was Lowe the best climber in the world? Perhaps, by his own criteria, he was. Never mind his
superhuman list of accomplishments, which most climbers couldn’t squeeze into several
lifetimes. And forget his training regimen, strong mountain sense, or visionary knack for
seeing a new route where others see madness.
Like it or not, in his own words, Lowe unwittingly pegged himself at the top of the heap:
“The best climber in the world is the one who’s having the most
fun.”
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