An appreciation of the life of an extraordinary mountain climber, Alex Lowe, who was killed in an avalanche at the peak of his amazing career. Written by Richard Mackenzie for National Geographic Television
I had the brief pleasure to meet Alex at the Lower Saddle of the Grand. It was 1985 (I think) He was so humble towards us newbies with our Exum Guides. I wish I had a photo of the moment, but I was too shy to ask. Later, at a gallery in Jackson Hole, I purchased an original painting by his wife, Jennifer Lowe, which I still hang proudly. He was referred to as “Lungs with Legs” for his super human abilities at altitude. RIP, forever on belay 😎
He was a friend of mine and I used to talk with him often at a gym in Bozeman called Universal Sports & Courts. In all my years of working out, he is only one of 2 people that I actually witnessed doing a one arm chin up, and I'm talking about hanging in with one hand and fully extended prior to the actual pull-up. He was always jovial and pound for pound, one of the strongest men I have ever known. He is greatly missed.
i never knew about this man until today, but i find myself in awe of his energy, even through this little old documentary. wish i had been able to meet him and shake his hand.
I met Alex when I was coming down from Denali to the airstrip at night. He was literally running up to set a speed record. My guide recognized him running towards us. He apologized for not having time to talk because he was trying to set a speed record. Incredible
3Vimages ....no...Denali. No one refers to it as McKinley anymore. They honour the Mountain by using it's Native name..DENALI. And we Alaskans...call it Denali!
I went to school in Boulder Colorado in the mid-90’s and met him at Boulder Mountaineer at a presentation he gave. I had a short conversation with him after and shook his hand, he was very nice and approachable. I remember him saying he would do 400 pull-ups and how a giant ice feature he was climbing fell off when he was attached to it. The thing was probably over a thousand pounds, so he was lucky then. I wanted inspiration today, so I searched his name for a documentary and this is what I found. Just what I needed.
Some men live for their own glory and contribute nothing. I have more respect for the people who made his boots and his tent than I do for his ability to hang from a rock.
Every man lives according to his own definition of living. You really don't need to climb mountains to live. A cup of tea in good company can make you feel alive. This saying (particularly used for people who do extreme sports) is just irrelevant
I was just reading the very same issue of National Geographic that appears on the table at 7:27; the December 1999 issue with "Coral Eden" on the cover and the article "Baffin Island First Ascent", featuring Alex-which brought me here. His climbs have been featuring in several Nat Geo issues. Great post, thanks!!
What a beautiful and strong man, to pass so soon. Never heard of him but, now I know who he was. I know his family will never forget him. So sad that those three boys won't grow up with their dad.
Don't worry. His best friend conrad anker swooped in, married Alex's widow & adopted her 3 kids. I wonder how long he made himself wait before making his move?
To the haters: he didn’t die doing some crazy stunt. He got hit by an avalanche. This is like Evil Knievel dying because he was hit by bus on the way to one of his shows. Don’t confuse the two.
Very bad analogy! Humans who are NORMAL do not feel the need to excel to the degree that they may die! Most show-offs seek the attention they receive due to an absence in their make-up of some kind.
M.J. Leger He wasn’t a show off- he was simply extremely competent at what he loved to do and figured out a way to make a living doing it. He was famous not only for his pure strength, but for his prudent and careful nature. He used protection, and planned his climbs intelligently- pushing himself a little past his prior limitations but never once taking on something he knew was well beyond his ability. He was the ideal climbing partner because you KNEW he would not leave you on the mountain. He did not die taking some foolish risk- he died because an avalanche swept him away. By comparison... you drive to work every damn day and every time you get in your car you take a risk. You COULD be killed or injured in an accident. You evaluate that risk and do what you can to mitigate it thru careful attention and maintaining your car, but you Still take the3 risk, and someday you might be killed thru no fault of your own because of some other driver’s mistake. While I don’t think climbing Everest is worth a single human life... I have been a climber and one of the great things about climbing is you are not competing against other climbers. EVERYONE want to see you successfully make the climb. You are competing against your own physical and mental limitations- striving to better your own personal prior climbs.
@Alexis Zaganidis you don't understand statistics. Taking a total stat like that, and trying to apply it to an individual just doesn't work like that. Odds of dying in a scenario is not a function of total death stats. A sherpa odds of dying is very different than a 65 year old western man. Or a 25 year old asian woman. The total death statistic is an average of all skill levels, all health and ability levels. It has zero bearing on any individuals actual odds. Some people step into base camp and have a 50/50 shot of making it off the mountain. Similar to people quoting odds of dying in a plane crash.... You can believe you have a 1 in whatever million, or that its more dangerous to drive a car. It's not true. The stats are very skewed by the fact that most people never fly, and most people that do fly do so very infrequently. If you break air travel down "per trip" or "per mile traveled", things break down very differently. Stats are very easy to misrepresent.
Seems as though every year or two the Karakoram/Himalayas take out one or more of the world's elite climbers. Boardman/Tasker, Renato Casarato, Pierre Beghin, Boukreev, Alex McIntyre, Alex Lowe, Jean-Christophe Lafaille, etc. In 2017 it was Ueli Steck, whose exploits were also categorized as superhuman.
I learned about him and his passing on the documentary meru, and my question is why is conrad anker not part of this seeing how he was the third person and only survivor of the avalanche on the mountain that day?
A man that provides for his family working every day is a hero. Id rather live to be an old man and be there to enjoy the life i was given. All men have their limits some choose to push them to the extreme.
Bigdogmax Bigdoghoso True, but then there are the people they leave behind and the lives that are risked trying to rescue and/or retrieve them or their bodies. Remarkable man, though. A very sad loss- he sounds like a decent as well as talented man.
Pretty messed up standards thinking soldiers are something especially admirably.. No soldier is capable of living on his own, in nature like mountaineers does. Totally different mindset and approaches
Do you know what's the weirdest thing about "Lowe"? This specific surname became synonym to climbing and mountaineering. Too many great Lowes (related to each other or not)...Alex, George (from New Zealand), George Henry III and his cousins Creg & the legendary Jeff (the last two founders of Lowe Alpine along with their brother Mike).
That view at 6:40 totally leaves me cold! I have acrophobia but learned to control that fear by flying an aircraft, where you must look DOWN all the time, and it helped me; I've skied some great mountains, but I do NOT go off trail, well, I did once, on a heli-ski trip to ski virgin snow with 5 other skiers, but I weighed all the balances BEFORE I went so as to know the risks. But when i read about rock falls, avalanches but ESPECIALLY crevasses, it keeps me off the mountains that have those! Falling into a crevasse is about the worst thing I can think of, they look so deep, like no bottom in the videos I've seen and that is unbearably scary to me.
"The best of our time" How many climbers can be the best of our time at the same time? Perhaps the phrase 'among the best of our time' would be more accurate.
He's just one of many Mr. Invincibles, like or Alberto Zerain or Rob Hall. Factually, no one is truly invincible up on the mountains. There's an entirely new generation of seemingly invincible climbing legends, like free soloist Alex Honnold, out testing their invincibility.... but when push comes to shove between invincible climbers and the mountains, the mountain is almost always gonna win that fight. May God protect all those whose lives revolve around mountain or boulder climbing.
Feel sure she knew the dangers when she married him and had a family. You don't marry someone to change them. She didn't seem to want to. I have huge respect for her.
He was an absolute amazing person. The epidomy of freak of nature athlete in an Elite field of athletes like Jordan, Babe Ruth, and Wayne Gretzky . He was an above ordinary climber, and such a perfect gentleman, and equally polite friend he will be missed
Tyler Cochran lol thank you. I couldn't believe I spelt that word wrong, because I literally just spelt it out and laughed at myself. Thanks for the call out, and thx for not being a dick about it haha
No sense feeling sorry for a legend like this, as such is the inevitable fate of all hardcore adrenaline junkies, who fuck around with the Grim Reaper believing they can cheat him and not have to pay. Or the old saying, slightly altered, "If you are driven to dance with Death, you eventually gotta pay the fiddler" They believe they are 10 feet tall and bullet proof, but it is a self delusion...but he had a warrior spirit, no doubt
He may have been strong physically, but he might not have been good at using the muscle in between his ears! Excessive risk taking masquerading as "invincibility" finally caught up with him. Just ask his fatherless children & widow. And how he says "I think they're cooler than we are!" Really, alex? If they're so cool, why are you out feeding you outsized ego, far from home?
Clearly a phenomenal climber. His skills were amazing. I have a concern about ranking, good, better, best. Was he better than his cousin Jeff? How about Messner, Steck, pick your favorite? Can we admire his skills without ranking. Be it guitar players, climbers, whatever there's a tendency to rank them. I've known many excellent climbers, some fine people, some not so much. In each case I admire their skills but I've preferred to spend time with the ones who are good people.(I never met Alex, this is not intended to reflect in any way upon him as a person)
I'm not knocking this climber with all due respect I can't understand how anybody could be so bold and brave 2 want to do that let alone climbing such dangerous Cliffs and mountains amazing seems like just miserable grueling freezing cold hard work
Nice piece. Sorry Alex got crushed in an Avalanche and I know he was special but still..... 1000s of people in small towns in the Alps, skiers, hikers, many other places in the world plus kids were killed by the same thing but not on purpose. Do a show about normal people killed. You can do BIO's on Holocaust survivors, musicians, artists, politicians, great moms and dads, kids with incredible potential in life.....you would have 100s to 1000s of hours of content talking about the lives of all the other people killed by avalanche accidents.
@nepafu666 lol...Plenty of movies on all that he mentioned. He's a hater and he feels compelled to share his hate. These people are called trolls and if you feed them they flourish. Starve them and they die sitting on their couch, eating potato chips, drinking cola and getting fatter, while descending into diabetes.
