Stewart Alexander Lowe (24 December 1958 – 5 October 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.
Stewart Alexander Lowe (24 December 1958 – 5 October 1999) was an American mountaineer. He has been described as inspiring “…a sum up generation of climbers and explorers taking into account his uncontainable enthusiasm, legendary training routines, and significant ascents of rock climbs, ice climbs, and mountains everything 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 in the works here, and after that there’s the land of us next to here. The guy’s just essentially that much better than everybody else.” and Conrad Anker said, “We’re all at this one level, and later there’s Alex.” Lowe himself said “The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun!”
Lowe augmented his upper body strength fittingly 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 later 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 get pull-ups in many airports. Even on expeditions, when burning is hard to make a purchase of and much appreciated, Lowe was an oddball. He’d cop pull-ups upon a ship’s rigging en route to Antarctica, or realize dips in a snow pit he dug at base camp.” In that article, Wiltsie said, “At Baffin Island, after hauling supplies to a tall point upon a climb, we went back up to camp emphasis and tired, but Alex proceeded to do pull-up after pull-up. He even brought an exercise device upon climbs.” He was known jokingly as “Lungs With Legs” and “The Mutant” for his unbelievable 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 action 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 long-lasting climbers were everything suffering from hypothermia. Lowe, Mark Twight and Scott Backes were lifted by military helicopter to a plateau above the Spaniards, scaled down a 400-vertical foot, 50-degree twist of ice and rock, to attain them and certain that one needed terse evacuation. Amid snowy conditions, he at first dragged, then carried him on his back up up the steep aim at tall altitude.