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alex lowe, r.i.p.
(one-twentyfive a/m, ten-seven-ninetynine, at the statesman)
I'm not sure why I feel this way -- like someone who's lost a good friend.
My only connection to Alex Lowe was our hometown -- Bozeman, Montana. I never met him. I didn't even know who he was when I lived there. But still, I developed a fondness for a fellow Montanan and loved reading about him in the climbing mags and online. I guess I have been living vicariously through him. He seemed invincible and, yet, not cocky like most climbers. He seemed genuine and thoughtful.
I heard of his death yesterday while proofing the paper. I read the brief twice before I could believe it. "Oh my God. No. Not Alex," I said aloud. The others on the desk looked up. I explained to them who Alex was, but they not knowing him, went back to work. Still in disbelief, I logged onto mountainzone.com to get the full details.
Now, more than a day later, I'm still waiting for something to prove he's dead -- maybe a searcher finding him or the passage of time that seals his fate. Having just edited many stories about survivors being pulled from rubble in Turkey and Taiwan days after the earthquakes there, I'm still thinking there's a chance. Maybe some miracle will happen.
Mountaineering guidebooks tell me that the forces of an avalanche are something akin to liquid concrete. Descriptions of the slide's power, written by Conrad Anker and others for The wire services and MountainZone, confirm the likelihood that neither Alex nor Dave Bridges, a cameraman on the expedition, could have survived. But I still can't accept it.
Maybe my disbelief is rooted in the survival instinct that seems instilled in Montanans and the symbolic, if not real bond that exists between all who live in that part of the country. If you haven't lived there, you may not understand it. More than that, though, is this is the first tragedy that, for one reason or another, has affected me deeply. The fact it was a climber only adds to the immensity of it.
My sympathies go out to all who knew Alex and especially to his wife and three children.
May we see him waving from a summit somewhere in the next life.
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