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Show rere — Ta i: SE OS Eh NG WE es AP NS eae Local Climbers Mourn the Passing of Alex Lowe —Alex Wells be ot surprisingly, Alex Lowe saw the the climbers, who were taking time to accli- avalanche first. The man who matize to the 18,000-foot altitude at their arguably was the world’s most talented advanced base camp, ascended 1,000 feet mountaineer shouted a warning to the oth- to study the whole route, later, would glaciers and ers in his climbing party on the southwest face of 26,291-foot Sie apEnane: in. Chinese Tibet. lower part of their route. The which they planned to attempt eventually take them across up a steep (about 45 degrees) Six thousand feet above them, a lab of ~ couloir to the summit. Once there, they snow and ice had grown a bit too heavy to remain clinging to the steep slope on which it rested. It cracked, slid free of the rocks underneath it, then thundered downhill. As it did, it pushed other snow along with it, broke apart into tiny, fast-moving particles, 3 and gained speed, until it became a pow- — dery wall perhaps 500 feet wide and traveling 100 mph. _ would ski back down, while the pore Oct. 5 was to be a routine day for the - group, which included Lowe, of Bozeman, Montana; Andrew McLean, the expedition leader, an accomplished ski mountaineer from Park City; Conrad Anker, a highly experienced climber and former Park City resident, who now lives in Telluride, Colorado; Hans Saari, a Bozeman-based extreme - skier, and Mark Holbrook, a Utah native who was the 1979 national freestyle skiing champion, as well as a photographer, Kristoffer Erickson, and one of the expedition’s three camera men, Dave Bridges, of Aspen, Colo. And, in a way, the day was routine. After waking up to good weather, | crew shot footage for television. They had chosen the mountain, the 14th highest in the world, partly because they believed it—unlike many others in that range—to be skiable from the top. As 8,000- meter peaks go, Shishapangma is not the one of the most severe. Yet no ascent at this elevation is safe. Lowe, a cerebral climber who sometimes entertained himself by unraveling calculus probleins in camp, knew this. So did McLean and Anker. All three had spent years skiing in the backcountry of the Wasatch Mountains, where the risks are easier to identify and avoid. Death happens here sometimes; in the Himalaya, it happens far more often. In the Himalaya, all the variables that can make mountains in the continental U.S. treacherous—weather, altitude, glaciers, rockfall and avalanches—are as hard to grasp as an 8,000-meter summit. The. weather is more fickle and violent; the air thinner, the glaciers more widespread, and the terrain generally steeper. Worst of all may be the avalanche risk. Ridgetops, along which high winds can deposit tons of snow agrees Chris Harmston of Salt Lake City, who climbed often with Lowe in the early even during fair weather, are often miles avalanches since 1993. No single, headline-making climb set him apart from the others. Lowe— who lived in Salt Lake City in the early ‘90s while employed by Black Diamond, Ltd. and the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center—had away from climbers. Even the most savvy alpinists struggle to decipher what's happening on those ridges. At best, they can minimize risk by traveling relatively safe ~ routes on relatively safe days. But sometimes “relative safety” isn’t safe enough. And on Oct. 5, though the climbers proba-_ bly had done little or nothing that could be faulted, the mountain let loose above them. The eyewitness accounts of the avalanche seem to reveal the strangeness of watching a slide this big unleashed. ~ Holbrook and Erickson initially thought the slide wouldn’t reach them. They stood still for a moment, taking pictures of the approaching snow. Lowe, Bridges and Anker ran in opposite directions, McLean jumped behind rocks. Anker, who once led a 90s, and who has lost six friends to -climbed Everest twice, had established new routes on.20,000-foot peaks in the ‘Himalaya and Peru, and had scaled a 2,000-foot granite pillar in Antarctica while’ _ photographers and film-makers hired by National Geographic recorded his every move. He had pioneered many ice, freeclimbing and big-wall routes. But none of his feats, by itself, thrilled the general pub- - lic. Instead, Lowe’s legend grew piecemeal as he completed dozens of relatively obscure new routes, or completed old routes much faster than had ever been done. Among devoted climbers, many of petition drive protesting KPCW’s shift to classical programming, eventually dove whom seldom lay eyes on an issue of face-down onto the ice, digging in with his Outside Magazine, word about Lowe ice ax and shielding his head with his arms. spread largely. by word of mouth. Then he hung on for life while the avalanche Everyone seems to have an Alex Lowe blasted over him. He sustained lacerations, — story. Grissom, for example, recalls the time a torn shoulder muscle, and a broken rib, he was drinking coffee early one morning in but he survived. Lowe and Bridges didn’t. a tent at 14,000 feet on Denali when sudLowe’s passing seems to trouble memdenly Lowe poked his head through the bers of the local climbing community differflap. Traveling across the hard-frozen snow, ently from the deaths of other great he had run there from the 7,000-foot elevaclimbers (and other friends). Climbers who © tion in the middle of the night. In the next may have felt that skill and smarts alone _few weeks Lowe would participate in two could keep them alive on the hugest mounseparate high-altitude rescues on the mountains, suddenly have to reconsider that tain: one where he dragged, then carried a premise. “His death upsets good climbers Korean climber several hundred yards up a because they look at somebody like Alex steep slope to a helicopter waiting at an altiwho could do it year after year after year tude of 19,500 feet, another where he and live, and they think it might be. possible dragged a Taiwanese climber 2,200 vertical to reconcile climbing and having a family,” feet downhill to a camp at 17,200 feet. Then says Colin Grissom of Park City, a criticalhe went back to climbing for fun. care physician who met Lowe on Denali in lf he was God, God is equal parts stamithe mid- 19908: “If Alex can get snuffed, any: na, intuition, raw intelligence and grace, body can.” with a healthy dose of dedication thrown in. “He was the god, he was the master,” He was so strong that a college cross-coun- EYE DOCTOR Better vision through professional care 653 West 5400 South 262-1799 | 6661 ‘vl Y3dO1D0| VL www.interneteyedoctor.com Dr. Michael G. Thain, O.D. Joseph G. Carbone, A.B.0.C., N.C.L.C. Diagnosis and Treatment of Eye Injury and Disease Se ARE FSP Ete -"@ ‘ 1 We RO eh oe |