{"id":2460751,"date":"2016-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/alex-lowes-body-found-shishapangma\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:17:05","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T18:17:05","slug":"alex-lowes-body-found-shishapangma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/climbing\/alex-lowes-body-found-shishapangma\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Lowe\u2019s Body Found on Shishapangma"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 5, 1999, an avalanche<\/a> high on the slopes of Tibet\u2019s 26,289-foot Shishapangma swept down the mountain\u2019s south face, killing Bozeman, Montana\u2019s Alex Lowe\u2014then 40 and easily the best all-around mountaineer of his generation<\/a>\u2014and expedition cameraman and rising star David Bridges, 29, of Aspen, Colorado.<\/p>\n

Lowe, Bridges, and Conrad Anker\u2014Lowe\u2019s best friend and regular climbing partner\u2014were leading a reconnaissance hike to scope out the couloir they hoped to ski from the mountain\u2019s summit, an objective that would have made their nine-man expedition the first by Americans to ski an 8,000-meter peak. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As the avalanche struck, Anker ran to the left while Bridges and Lowe ran downhill and right. Anker was partially buried and had a rib snapped and his head gashed open by the ice projectiles that hit him. But he could walk. Below him, in a group that was bringing up the rear, Utah skiers Andrew McLean and Mark Holbrook, along with Bozeman skiers Hans Saari (who died two years later in a ski accident in Chamonix, France) and Kristoffer Erickson*, avoided the avalanche. With Anker, they spent the next two days searching for any sign of Lowe and Bridges. They didn\u2019t find so much as a glove.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my perspective there was just this big white cloud, and then it settled and there was nothing there,\u201d Anker recalled during a phone interview from Bozeman, where he and Jennie landed on April 29 after spending the spring in Nepal. \u201cAnd it was just so massive and so big. There wasn\u2019t that sense of closure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anker began helping Lowe\u2019s widow Jenni to raise their three boys<\/a>, Max, Isaac, and Sam, back in Bozeman. The two, in their shared grief, soon fell in love and were married in 2001. That story was the subject of a memoir<\/a> by Jenni Lowe-Anker and chronicled in the documentary Meru<\/em><\/a>, which played in theaters across the U.S. last year and made the short list for the 2016 Oscars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now Lowe\u2019s death appears to have a final resolution. Last week, on April 27, some 16 years, 6 months, and 22 days after their disappearance, the bodies of Lowe and Bridges were found by Swiss and German alpinists Ueli Steck, 39, and David Goettler, 37. The two partners are attempting to climb a new route up Shishapangma\u2019s south face this spring.<\/p>\n

\"Ueli
Ueli Steck at the base of Everest in April 2012.<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of fitting that it\u2019s professional climbers who found him,\u201d Anker says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a yak herder. It wasn\u2019t a trekker. David and Ueli are both cut from the same cloth as Alex and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of never realized how quickly it would be that he\u2019d melt out,\u201d says Jenni Lowe-Anker. \u201cI thought it might not be in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anker and Jenni Lowe-Anker had spent much of the spring in the Khumbu region of Nepal working on the Khumbu Climbing Center (KCC), a project of the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation<\/a>. They\u2019d missed Steck and Goettler by a day as the two alpinists acclimatized in the Khumbu before heading over to Chinese-controlled Tibet for their climb. (Shishapangma, the world\u2019s 14th-highest mountain, is the only 8,000-meter peak that sits completely inside Tibet.) As Conrad and Jenni were preparing to fly home to Bozeman on the 27th, Anker\u2019s phone rang. It was Goettler, attempting to confirm the identity of the two bodies they\u2019d discovered partially melting out of the glacier.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, We came across two bodies,\u201d says Anker. \u201cThey were close to each other. Blue and red North Face backpacks. Yellow Koflach boots. It was all that gear from that time period. They were pretty much the only two climbers who were there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anker hasn\u2019t seen photos, and there hasn\u2019t been a conclusive test, but he\u2019s already convinced. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty sure it\u2019s them,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike the remains of climbers that are sometimes found high on Everest, the bodies of Lowe and Bridges are in a place where they can be recovered. (The body of guide Scott Fischer, a casualty of the 1996 storm on Everest that spawned Into Thin Air<\/em>, remains on the mountain in line with the wishes of his family.)<\/p>\n

Conrad, Jenni, and the three boys, now grown, are now planning to travel to Tibet during the summer monsoon. They\u2019ll recover the bodies (they haven\u2019t yet been in touch with Bridges\u2019s family) and most likely return to Nyalam, Tibet, the closest town, to hold a ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proper thing to do will be to take care of his body according to local practices,\u201d says Anker. \u201cThey\u2019re still frozen into the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never something you look forward to,\u201d says Jenni. \u201cTo see the body of somebody you loved and cared about. \u00a0But there is a sense that we can put him to rest, and he\u2019s not just disappeared now.\u201d<\/p>\n

This spring, like the last three, has been exceptionally warm and dry in the Himalayas. The increasingly common wind storms that deposit heat-absorbing dust on the glaciers have sped up melting even more. Everest Base Camp, at the head of the Khumbu Glacier in Nepal, has seen running streams and climbers relaxing in shorts and flip-flops, something that usually doesn\u2019t happen until May. That\u2019s one possible explanation for why the bodies could have melted out so quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Conrad and Jenni, the event seemed to have added significance, given the recent events in Nepal. \u201cWhether it\u2019s fate or coincidence or timing, you never know,\u201d says Conrad. \u201cThe Khumbu is still bereft of tourists, and people in Nepal are still suffering,\u201d says Jenni. \u201cThe people there are still so hopeful that there\u2019ll be a good season on Everest and that tourism will return. For us to be up there was a bright spot for them and for us. Conrad made an appearance at Base Camp, and that was meaningful to them and all the people that have worked with us on KCC. \u00a0And then to have [Alex found on] the very last day. … I thought that was kind of serendipitous. It was like Alex appearing in a way to say, Hey, good work. I\u2019m done. I\u2019m done now.\u201d<\/p>\n

*Update: An earlier version of this story misspelled\u00a0Kristoffer Ericsson's name.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lowe\u2019s climbing partner, Conrad Anker, and his widow, Jenni-Lowe Anker, talk about a dramatic discovery that comes more than 16 years after he and climber David Bridges vanished in a Himalyan avalanche<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":2075016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"a343473e0770c2b72e0c3e3522e11045","footnotes":""},"categories":[2543],"tags":[2640,3102],"byline":[1148],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2460751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climbing","tag-climbing","tag-mount-everest","byline-grayson-schaffer"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Alex Lowe\u2019s Body Found on Shishapangma","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/climbing\/alex-lowes-body-found-shishapangma\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/climbing\/alex-lowes-body-found-shishapangma\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/30\/alex-lowe-and-anker_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/30\/alex-lowe-and-anker_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Climbing","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"srosenfield"}],"creator":["srosenfield"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["climbing","mount everest"],"dateCreated":"2016-04-30T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2016-04-30T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T18:17:05Z"},"rendered":"