Swiss mountain climber Ueli Steck has found the body of Alex Lowe 16 years after he was buried by an avalanche in the Himalayas.
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“It was David Goettler and Ueli Steck who were acclimatizing for an ascent on the south face of Shishapangma” – the 26,291-foot peak (the world’s fourteenth highest) Lowe and Bridges were climbing when they vanished.
Göttler described clothing and packs found with the remains to Conrad Anker, another member of the 1999 expedition, who identified them as belonging to Lowe and Bridges.
Mrs Lowe-Anker married her former husband’s friend Conrad Anker, who was climibing with the two men when they were killed.
The couple live in Bozeman, Montana, and run the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation together.
Both Bridges, 29, and Lowe, 40, were master climbers: Bridges, a champion paraglider in addition to a mountaineer, was acting as the expedition’s cameraman and videographer at the time of the avalanche and had led a successful expedition to the top of K2 at the age of 23.
Lowe was widely regarded as one of the most skilled climbers of his generation.
But that day, a massive avalanche struck and swept them away.
According to the Guardian, he said: “They were close to each other”.
Along with Mr Anker, the pair were part of an advance party crossing a glacier at 19,000 feet when an ice ridge broke off 6,000 feet above them, triggering an avalanche.
Conrad Anker also said that the discovery brought him relief and that he too was happy to have closure. “Sixteen years of life has been lived and now they are found. We are thankful”, she said in a statement.
Lowe, Anker and Bridges – a respected climber himself – were seeking to become the first Americans to ski down from the summit of Shishapangma for an episode of an NBC Sports documentary series called “The North Face Expeditions”, hosted by the musician Sting.
“Alex’s parents are thankful to know that their son’s body has been found and that Conrad, the boys and I will make our pilgrimage to Shishapangma”, Jennifer Lowe-Anker said in a statement.
‘It’s never something you look forward to, ‘ Lowe-Anker told Outside. But there is a sense that we can put him to rest, and he’s not just disappeared now’.
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The website of AlexLowe.org, a charitable foundation Jenni and Anker run, has revealed that two bodies were recently discovered frozen in a glacier – and they’re believed to be Lowe and Bridges.
