Alex Lowe

Alex Lowe
Alex Lowe on Annapurna III in 1996.
Born	Stewart Alexander Lowe (1958-12-24)December 24, 1958 Frederick, Maryland, United States
Died	October 5, 1999(1999-10-05) (aged 40) Shishapangma, Tibet, China
Nationality	American
Occupation	Mountaineer, Climber
Website	http://alexlowe.org

Stewart Alexander "Alex" Lowe (December 24, 1958 – October 5, 1999) was an American mountaineer. He has been described as inspiring "...a whole generation of climbers and explorers with his uncontainable enthusiasm, legendary training routines, and significant ascents of rock climbs, ice climbs, and mountains all over the world...". He died in an avalanche in Tibet. The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation honors his legacy.

Lowe was widely admired by his peers for excelling in every aspect of mountaineering, from rock- and ice-climbing to ski descents. Dave Hahn once remarked, "There's Alex Lowe up here, and then there's the rest of us down here. The guy's just really that much better than everybody else." and Conrad Anker said, "We're all at this one level, and then there's Alex." Lowe himself said "The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun!"

Lowe improved his upper body strength as a result of an exercise regimen that included 400 chin-ups and hundreds of dips. In an article for Active Lifestyle, Gordon Wiltsie, a photographer who climbed with Lowe in Antarctica and Canada's Baffin Island, said, "he'd hog the pull-up bar to knock out 400 pull-ups in sets of 40 and 45. He disliked downtime and 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." In that article, Wiltsie said, "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. He even brought an exercise device on climbs." He was known jokingly as "Lungs With Legs" for his incredible strength and stamina.

In June 1995, Lowe helped the National Park Service rescue several Spanish climbers on 20,320-foot (6,190 m) Denali in Alaska. On 9 June the group had been trapped for four days at 19,200 feet (5,900 m). Before a rescue team could assemble, one of the climbers fell 4,200 feet (1,300 m) to his death from the mountain's Upper West Rib. The surviving climbers were all suffering from hypothermia. Lowe and two fellow climbers were immediately lifted by military helicopter to a plateau above the Spaniards, scaled down a 400-vertical foot, 50-degree slope of ice and rock, to reach them and determined that one needed immediate evacuation. Amid snowy conditions, he at first dragged, then carried him on his back up the steep slope at high altitude.