How Alex Lowe Shines for Us Even Now (Despite Some Dark Days)

May 12, 2016May 26, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

Early on the morning of May 1, 2016, I was catching up on the news I missed during a mad-dash trip to New York City with Natalie and the kids. After I got through my political and baseball news apps’ feeds, the reports of Ueli Steck’s and David Goettler’s discovery on the south face of Shishapangma was all that mattered: Alex Lowe’s and David Bridges’ remains were found after 16 years.

We knew it would happen, but I resented that Fox News, NPR and so many other mainstream sources were covering it. I prefer to keep access to climbing news through climbing sources and climbers’ personal posts. This was out there for everyone to grab. Really out there. (Except, it was already mainstream; their deaths were reported in the New York Times, but I only just learned that.)

I get anxious about this stuff. After all, Alex has a widow. She wrote a beautiful memoir. What would it mean to his best friend and now her husband? The press never cares about stuff like that.

But as a few days passed, I realized the family’s personal reaction wasn’t as interesting as the one from everyone else that had some deep rooted knowledge, and often, affection, for Alex.

The Portal

On October 5, 1999, Conrad Anker, David Bridges, and Alex Lowe were climbing Shishapangma. They were around 19,000 feet and intending to make the first American ski descent of the 8,000-meter peak. A large serac calved and started a massive avalanche down the south face. Anker was blown up into the air. Bridges and Lowe disappeared into the debris of loosened snow and enormous blocks of ice.

Conrad Anker is one of America’s best recognized mountaineers today, particularly since he discovered the body of George Mallory on Everest and even more so now that he appeared in Jimmy Chin’s award winning 2015 film Meru.

David Bridges was a climber and photographer on the rise, known for his strength and endurance. He was 29.

Alex Lowe, 40 at the time, was a living legend. He performed insane rescues on Denali, earning him he affectionate nickname “The Lung”. He rode a Goddamn giant broken icicle to the ground and lived to ice climb again. And he was Anker’s friend.

Lowe’s widow, Jennifer, knew very well that one day Alex’s body would come to the surface. She said in her memoir that she was not looking forward to it.

Turning to One Another

I reached out to some friends to see how the news affected them, some of whom hadn’t heard the news yet. They weren’t surprised; glaciers routinely turn up what they’ve taken from us. And it wasn’t particularly enlightening; it wasn’t like finding George Mallory’s and Sandy Irvine’s camera. But it made us talk not about new routes and reaching, but about Alex and our humanity.

Alex made them feel good. And he still does. Here are two examples:

Whenever Jason Cobb, who’s written a guest post here on TSM before, thinks of Alex he

thinks of him grinning ear to ear, with his “crazy” hair sticking up, gripping his ice tools. Alex conjures up a sense of daring, and being gifted, while conveying enthusiasm that’s still infectious today.

Another friend, a former contractor I hired to do some data management work, didn’t know about Alex when we met. She was a big rock climber (even climbed when she was very pregnant) and worked for years at out local outfitter on weekends. I wrote my series on The Greatest Climber of All Time because of our conversations about all of the great climbers she didn’t know. Alex naturally came up, both in talks with me and her talks with her colleagues at the outfitter. She asked her colleagues for advice for a thank-you gift when her contract ended; I received Jennifer Lowe-Anker’s memoir, Forget Me Not.

She went on to recognize Alex’s influence on the stories with Conrad Anker, particularly the National Park Adventure IMAX film featuring Conrad and Alex’s son, Max. She emailed me as soon as she heard the news from Shishapangma: “It brings everything full circle.”

Finding Alex again has made us pause and reflect on his life, not unlike on a religious feast day. It’s made us look at ourselves, not just inwardly, but toward one another. I think we live in an era that is simultaneously wondrous and worrisome.

In a day and age where social structures are being “disrupted” and the craziness of a presidential election is crazy unlike ever before, and threat of terrorist attacks hangs over everyone quietly, Alex Lowe and Dave Bridges make an appearance. That’s significant, because in 1999 when they were lost, the world was was also a scary place: in January President Clinton was impeached in a partisan brawl; war broke out in Kosovo; East Timor’s vote for independence was met with uprooting; people fretted about what the Y2K bug would mean; and two students from Colombine High School in Colorado killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves in a searing mass shooting.

Alex shined to us then. Alex shines now. He did that despite the horrors of his times. And now we’ve found him again. Maybe it was just when we needed him most.

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Sources: 1) Alpinist; 2) Rock and Ice; and 3) Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Forget Me Not, (City, Publisher 2009), pages.

John Muir and Hudson Stuck Feast Day

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

In 2009, two significant historical individuals close to climbers and outdoor enthusiasts were given a status near Sainthood: John Muir (1834-1914), the great explorer and photographer, and Hudson Stuck (1863-1920), the leader of the first successful ascent of Denali, were named Holy Men by the Episcopal Church.

Because of their status as great Episcopalians, Holy Men are assigned a feast day, a day of celebration, on the church’s calendar. April 22nd was named their combined feast day. Not coincidentally, April 22nd is also Earth Day.

If you’re Episcopalian, or even Catholic, you know that there was nothing resembling a Thanksgiving holiday on any saint’s or holy person’s feast day. Rather it is a day to contemplate, dwell, or meditate on the holy person’s life and work. However, there are particular mentions, prayers, or readings from scripture assigned or associated with the feast day’s honoree (or in this case, the honorees) on their feast day to help celebrate and speak something to one’s soul.

The official record by the Episcopal Church in naming these men as Holy characterized Muir as a “Naturalist and Writer” while identifying Stuck as a “Priest and Environmentalist.” (Stuck was an Archdeacon in the Diocese of Alaska.)

You may read the prayer and scripture readings by clicking to this page of the Episcopal Church’s website.

So on their upcoming feast day, ask yourself (and maybe even your friends), what does John Muir and Hudson Stuck mean to you and your community?

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Sources: 1) EpiscopalChurch.org, 2) Sierra Club and 3) Episcopal Diocese of Alaska.

Voytek Kurtyka, The Great

March 10, 2016April 7, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

The question “why do you climb?” takes us all down a slippery slope; it never yields a satisfying answer for anyone. However, the question of what we seek in climbing may be more effective than asking why we climb at all, according to Kelly Cordes in correspondence in 2012 with Katie Ives of Alpinist.

I have often said that climbing, and to a higher degree alpinism, allows us to pull back the veil of fear and see through to a glimpse of enlightenment. Also, that that quest is a reason to climb or appreciate climbing and committed climbers. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn over the last twenty years of being obsessed with various forms of climbing.

However, the Himalayan veteran Voytek Kurtyka of Poland has insight that’s deeper, fuller, and more complex. He’s a bit of a mystery to me. I’m fascinated by what he thinks and I’ve been examining it for some time.

And darn it! I don’t know why he didn’t make my short-short list of the Greatest Climbers of All Time. I must have missed something.

The Greatest Climber of All Time

In 2013, just before my Schnickelfritz was born, I started a series of posts to identify the greatest climbers of all time. With a lot of thought and input from readers like you, we narrowed the field to just five climbers and ranked them. I now think that the list is wrong.

I was often told that my quest was foolish and that not only that it couldn’t be done that I shouldn’t even try.

Yet, naming the greats wasn’t actually about putting these climbers on some sort of lifetime achievement award at the Piolet d’Or, but rather a journey to consider why we glean what we do from our heroes. It was as much about us as it was about the climbers we considered.

While I can’t dispute that the people we named, from Walter Bonatti to Jerzy Kukuczka were indeed great, but I think I made a mistake in setting the rubric. Did Kurtyka belong in the top five?

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Piolet d’Or award committee tried to hand its lifetime achievement honor to Voytek Kurtyka before. He declined; uninterested in attending and felt it was unnecessary. He’s an intensely private man and usually very forward focused. However, now almost 70 years old, an arrangement must have been struck for him to accept in April 2016, which many feel is long overdue.

In Freedom Climbers, Bernadette McDonald wrote about when Jerzy Kukuczka and Kurtyka completed the first traverse of Broad Peak’s three summits in 1984, that the world of climbers considered Kurtyka to be the top Polish alpinist, and then she added, “possibly the best in the world.”

Kurtyka was a member of various Polish national expeditions to make the first winter ascents of the 8,000-meter peaks. He put up daring new routes on Asia’s mountaineering landmarks, like Nameless Tower, Kohe Bandaka, Cho Oyu, and others. He made several notable attempts that earned their own admiration, included on K2, and Nanga Parbat’s high and long Mazeno Ridge. In concluding Freedom Climbers, McDonald summed up Kurtyka thusly:

The greatest export of the era was unquestionably Voytek: the thinking man’s climber, visionary and philosophical. He is remembered still for his uncompromising choice of lines. On some he succeeded; on others he failed. But his vision was always inspired. He didn’t enter the race for the 8,00p-metre peaks like Jurek and Wanda but instead made his name on the massive frozen faces, big technical walls and high-altitude traverses of the Himalaya. He was motivated by beautiful lines, difficult lines, futuristic lines. He eschewed fixed ropes and big expeditions, preferring the flexibility and independence of two- or three-person teams. And it was on the international stage that he shone brightest. (McDonald 318-319)

There is one ascent’s story that rivals, in my mind anyway, David Roberts’ The Mountain of My Fear, and that of the first ascent of the Shining Wall: In 1985, Kurtyka joined forces with Austrian alpinist Robert Schauer. Together they attempted one of Kurtyka’s obsessions: The West Face of Gasherbrum IV (pictured above), known as the Shining Wall for it’s reflective stone. They took only the clothes they wore, the minimal gear, a bivy sack, a little food, stove and fuel. McDonald characterized many of the anchors as merely “psychological” and having no tangible benefit. But as they went higher on the smooth wall, they were stopped by severe weather and cold nights. Kurtyka and Schauer experienced their bodies at the limit, including sensing a malicious presence of an invisible third man. They survived, completed the wall, but turned back on heading to the summit. This climb is a clear candidate for one of the greatest climbs of all time.

Insight from Voytek Kurtyka

Issue 43 of Alpinist is one of my favorite issues since I started subscribing a few year ago. It contains the crag profile for Squamish, British Colombia, and, perhaps more significantly, an interview of Kurtyka arranged by Bernadette McDonald, “The View from the Wall.” If we were to Canonize an Alpinists Bible, this could be the Book of Voytek.

What does Kurtyka say is the reason we climb? It’s about dignity; to find it, isolate it, and latch on to it longer. He acknowledges that we seek to climb something is mechanical but that there is a battle to do so, and it is inward. Can we respect ourselves? Can we pull ourselves together? Can we still see beauty? In fact, if we can maintain or hang on to our dignity, Kurtyka says we should see greater beauty and understood what is beautiful better. I am oversimplifying it, of course.

Kurtyka believes that climbing can open gateways to a realm that we are capable of connecting with. Call it spiritual or cosmic. He isn’t sure either. But all climbing does is open it for us to see it it. (Or perhaps it exposes ourselves? But that’s a different philosophical thought.)

I’ve read the interview half a dozen times in the last two years and every time I find his talk of whether there is a God unsettling. He says he cannot believe in a being that demands blind obedience. My understanding of such things says it requires a leap of faith. Of course, Kurtyka also said in the interview that he has always struggled with his ego, mainly tempering it. He made it sound like a nasty inward fight. Ego can be a major impediment to a quest for dignity and seeing beauty outside ourselves, including in the people around us. Ego, of course, is a barrier to any leaps of faith; so perhaps it’s not about whether he could believe in God but does he himself want to. I’m curious what his retort would be.

His perspective on God doesn’t have anything to do with the gateway to whatever that cosmic experience he has had in Gasherbrum IV or on so many other climbs. It seems he questions what God is more so than who it is, but it seems something of a higher being does exist for Kurtyka, even if it is not definable. Maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Why Voytek Kurtyka didn’t make my original list of the top five greatest climbers of all time is simple: He might be in a whole different category. Hopefully, I’ll have time to share that in more detail, in a presentable way. For now, cheers to Voytek Kurtyka, The Great, and congratulations at last on the Piolet d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award!

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It is Down to K2, and Other News

February 26, 2016April 18, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

I woke a short while ago and turned on my phone to read the news about the U.S. presidential debate held last night. Instead I was thrilled to hear this news:

At around 3:37 p.m. in the Karakorum, Alex Txikon, Ali Sadpara and Simone Moro radioed that they have made the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat. According to sources reported through Raheel Adnan, of Altitude Pakistan, the day was beautiful without even a cloud.

The descent is underway right now. So while the first ascent has been made, the climb is only half done. Good luck on the descent!

So that leaves K2 as the only 8,000-meter peak left unclimbed in winter.

(I guess we know where Simone Moro and everyone else will be applying for permits next year.)

In other news, the American Alpine Club is holding it’s Annual Benefit Dinner this weekend right here in town (Washington, DC). It’s like a mini-conference. Tonight is a members only (free to attend) Climbers Gathering at a local indoor climbing gym (not my local one, unfortunately), where well-known climbers will speak and several awards will be given, including honoring Katie Ives for excellence in climbing literature. Tomorrow there will be panel.discussions, a silent auction, and the main event featuring Conrad Anker and Damien Gildea to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1966 American mountaineering expedition to Antarctica.

I can’t attend this year, but I am thrilled to be meeting up with a few of the attendees, mostly known for their writing. (I’m keeping these meetings all off-the record; sorry.)

Also, if you haven’t heard, this year’s Piolet d’Or will award present the lifetime achievement award in April to Voytek Kurtyka. His climbing accomplishments, such as his work on Gasherbrum IV, and other ascents and attempts, were spectacular, and deserving of the award. But he resonates with me, and other climbers, also because he has an almost mystic side and connection with nature (i.e it’s wild unpredictable side) that leaves himself open to the mountain.

This time, leading up to the award ceremony might be a good time take a closer look at him and the little bit of writing he’s contributed to see what’s there for us. More on that later.

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Belmore Browne Against Denali

November 20, 2015April 8, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

Despite what his biography says on his official website, today Belmore Browne is better known as an artist than as a mountaineer. Perhaps that wasn’t always the case. But Browne seems to have been mostly neglected except for a handful of recent articulate pieces from an Alaskan newspaper and a few mentions in some recent books.

It’s Browne’s involvement with the history of the attempts that lead up to the first ascent of Denali that interest me; his role and accomplishments should put him in our collective memory more often.

Alaska’s Greatest Challenge

Denali’s summit was first reached in 1913 by Hudson Stuck, the Episcopal Archdeacon of the Yukon, and Harry Karsten, the “Seventy-Mile Kid,” Robert Tatum, and Walter Harper. Before that it may as well have been the last great problem on earth. Judge James Wickersham stood at the north face and dared to attempt it’s flank in 1903, though he soon declared that wall impassible.

Then in 1906 Frederick Cook returned to the mountain after circumnavigating it in 1903 and came with Herschel Parker and several other Alaskan adventurers. Cook and Parker lead a cross country expedition that took them across Western Alaska, into the Alaska Range and to the a glacier that Cook named for his daughter, Ruth. Crevasses severely broke up the frozen river that season and stopped the exploratory group in their tracks. They turned around going back west to return home.

Shortly before completing the return journey to their starting point, Cook announced he was returning immediately to climb the mountain with one other team member. Belmore Browne, who was among Cook’s and Parker’s men, looked on skeptically with Parker and Cook departed. Cook left, with some gear, but noticeably to both, without a rope, a key piece for safety and moving himself and equipment over glaciers and up slopes. Browne and Parker returned to civilization, with the seed of plans to return.

A Hoax as Big as Alaska

Cook returned announcing that he had climbed the mountain. And he had a traditional summit photo to prove it. Cook was celebrated for his vision, bravery, and the grand accomplishment.

However, Browne and Parker didn’t just doubt Cook, they flat out didn’t believe him. They had seen and been to the Alaska Range. They knew what a concerted attempt would require in time and energy. Denali was too expansive and too treacherous to have permitted Cook such swift access to the top in the time frame he claimed. In addition, Browne and Parker had traveled for weeks with Cook before being sent away and determined that Cook wasn’t trustworthy.

Although Cook’s alleged ascent of Denali is widely discredited as a hoax, the Frederick A. Cook Society continues to promote Cook’s many accomplishments, including being the first person to stand atop Denali, as bona fide truth.

For Browne, Denali hadn’t been climbed yet and still required someone to finish the job. By 1910, in fact, after four years of addressing Cook’s claims, the only way to clear things up was to disprove Cook’s summit photo and dash for the top himself. Browne recruited Parker to help him go for the summit, after they duplicated Cook’s summit photo — wherever it was taken.

Browne and Belmore knew the general return path Cook would have made back to Denali after they separated so they started there and looked to match the features in the photo with their limited maps and their view of the landscape. Then, they found it. Twenty miles southeast from Denali, at an insignificant nub at a mere 5,300 feet above sea level. This was almost 15,000 feet below the summit and nowhere near it. While they managed to prove no one had climbed the mountain yet, their attempt to get to the top was unsuccessful.

The Whiteout

Belmore Browne and Herschel Parker returned to climb Denali in 1912. Unlike any previous attempt, they found a route, and broke the altitude record for the mountain. Bound for the south summit (the highest point), walking up a modest snow field, they entered an absolute white out. The summit was hidden. The return route wasn’t even certain. And the mountain turned away Browne and Parker for good.

Browne would write about his three expeditions in a book first published in 1913, The Conquest of Mount McKinley. Browne also became a renounced painter, and an Alaskan political leader that even helped Alaska achieve statehood.

Browne’s efforts protected the integrity of Denali’s early climbs, laying the groundwork for Hudson Stuck to make his bid. Browne may be better known as an artist today, and he is a better known climber than a politician. Though, maybe he ought to be better known in full.

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Sources: 1) Anchorage Daily News; 2) BelmoreBrowne.com; and 3) David Roberts, The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America’s Boldest Mountaineer (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).

Three Things Climbers Cannot Ignore Much Longer

October 19, 2015April 8, 2016 / Andrew Szalay

Did you get the email from the Access Fund asking you to take-part in their survey? It asked two heavy questions, and for me, it revealed three things we cannot pretend isn’t happening.

Question 1: “What do you believe is the most pressing issue the climbing community will face over the next 5 years?”

Answer 1: How Climbing and Mountaineering is Portrayed in Major Films

Bad climbing movies may be more than just an irritant. Everest. Vertical Limit. They’re more likely to steer people away from climbing and draw the public’s attention away from the craft involved, the discipline and skills, and the beauty of nature, and sometimes elusive goals. Instead, in movies, climbers that die look obsessed and the survivors like lost souls with regret. None of which tells a truth that can be generalized for all of climbing-dom.

Climbing movies made for a broad audience draw in responses from all walks of life, but the group that sees a high peak and only thinks of cold and discomfort rather than beauty of nature and the nobility of patience and fortitude probably won’t easily get it through a film; we’ll always be “crazy” to them.

Is there anything we can do? Possibly.

When U.S. military veterans were returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan they were depicted as battle-weary, likely to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and people that were owed something. In some cases that was true, but largely it was not. It made it difficult for some to get jobs or at least the best jobs for them. Chris Marvin, an army pilot that was shot down and suffered many bodily injuries, returned to civilian life and started the veterans’ advocacy nonprofit Got Your 6, taken from a military phrase about protecting one’s blind spot; its mission was to refocus the public’s image of veterans as a public asset and to do so through a partnership through veterans nonprofit organizations and Hollywood. His effort was seen as successful and I recently invited and met him at a conference to learn more.

Climbing needs some ambassadors to the movie industry to help depict climbing in a more real light. Like the best comedy, where you don’t have to make things up, the best climbing film and stories, even for broad-audience movies, don’t have to be contrived and overly fictionalized (or even darkened) to represent what climbing is really like.

Answer 2: Integrity of Climbing When Transiting to the Outdoors

Climbing has been growing in popularity. (There are a lot of reasons to know this, but I’ll cite just this New Yorker story as the most comprehensive package.) This has been happening for a couple of decades but the last 10 or so years have been different because the attraction of indoor gyms have been leading the way to growth in the United States. And the movement by some to “advance” from gym to crag presents a new set of risks.

While there are efforts by gyms and even climbing groups like the American Alpine Club to educate people transitioning to outdoor climbing presents a unique risk to the activity for all of us.

New outdoor climbers need mentorship and support to ensure safety practices unique to the outdoors are done effectively, etiquette among climbers are maintained among other climbers as well as land holders and managers, and, last but not least, the traditions and history of climbing are passed on to younger climbers.

About traditions and history, it doesn’t surprise me but it bothers me too, that young climbers have no idea who some of the most significant climbers in history are, from Reinhold Messner, Walter Bonatti, to say… Fred Beckey or Tom Frost. These are leaders that set the bar for the expectations of what is possible and our new level of what is our horizon. These historical figures aren’t likely to be forgotten, but they seem to be easily dismissed or taken for granted.

Regarding etiquette and safety, efforts appear to be underway, but this singular concern, may have the broadest reach to affect all climbers. A few bad practices, a poor headline at the wrong time, could ruin access and costs for all of us.

Question 2: “If you could change one thing about the Access Fund, what would it be?”

Answer: Promote the Development of Concussion Protective Climbing Helmets

I wore a yellow hard hat when I was a college kid working for my father’s general contracting business. My climbing helmet, which was the old version of the Half Dome from Black Diamond, was the same thing except with a chin strap. Like my hard hat, it was great to protect my skull and brain from hard falling objects. But if I ever took a whipper by head would be mostly unprotected from the jolts and my brain was squish to one side, hopefully unscathed.

But that’s the thing, as this article in Climbing magazine said, no climbing helmet on the market protects us from the injuries of a concussion. Skiing has gone from no skier wearing a helmet to nearly everyone wearing fully protective — including head trauma — helmets in a mere few years. Much research and science has gone into the development of better preventative equipment and treatment for concussions thanks to professional team sports like American football, hockey, and other sports. We should join in.

If the climbing community, or its leaders (such as the helmet manufacturers), guide services, and land managers, required better helmets we’d all be safer.

The risk and adventure of climbing will still be ever present, but by reducing the risk of the potentially years-long or life-altering concussion injury.

Your Job

Whether these are really tasks for the Access Fund or some other organization like the AAC or AMGA, I don’t know. What I do know is that all of us that care about these things must speak up and say these three things are important.

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