As one of the most influential alpinists of his generation, Jeff Lowe, a former Boulder County resident, came alive as a creative genius on frozen waterfalls, vertical rock walls and steep snow slopes in the Rockies, the Alps and the Himalayas. When the time came for him to die — which he regarded with deep curiosity as yet another adventure — he wanted to be outside for that, too.
Lowe, who grew up in Utah but spent much of his adult life in Colorado, became the youngest to climb the Grand Teton at age 7. By his 20s he was renowned for his athleticism, grace and audacity while chalking up more than 1,000 first ascents. He had a reputation for climbs that others not only could not do but could not even imagine.
Lowe died at a Fort Collins nursing home Friday night with friends and family after a two-decade battle with an unknown neurodegenerative disease that had symptoms similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He was 67.
Sensing the end was near, Lowe’s family had checked him into the nursing home with hospice care eight days earlier. He spent nearly all of his final 72 hours outside, at his request.
“We just sat there and told stories about him, hanging out with him,” said his daughter, Sonja. “It was really a pretty nice time celebrating him.”
The stories spanned the years of his acclaimed alpine career as a visionary and an inspiration.
“Jeff was really quite instrumental in the development and growth of waterfall ice climbing,” said Phil Powers, chief executive of the American Alpine Club, based in Golden. “The other thing Jeff did was bring competition climbing to the United States. He helped create the Ouray Ice Festival. That’s before you even think about all the (new) routes he did — thousands of desert routes and hundreds of trips around the world, where new ground was broken. We might think he died at a young age, but he had a full life. He got a lot done.”
Perhaps his most audacious ascent was the notorious 6,000-foot North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps in 1991, a climb known throughout its history as a killer wall because of the constant threat of rockfall or avalanche. At the time, Lowe was recently divorced and his Colorado-based business, Latok Mountain Gear, was bankrupt. Creditors were pursuing him and some feared he was going to the Eiger feeling he had nothing to lose.
He came back a new man.
His former longtime partner, Connie Self, described how the trip changed him during a 2014 interview. By that time, she was his caregiver and he had a hard time speaking for himself because his disease had ravaged his voice.
“He met himself, and he experienced infinity, experienced the universe in all its grandeur and all its expansiveness, his purpose in it and what he needed to do,” Self said. “It changed everything for him.”
He named the route “Metanoia,” which is defined as “a fundamental change of thinking or a transformative change of heart.” He believed Metanoia gave him a glimpse of some sort of afterlife, and he carried that notion with him after he was stricken with the disease that would confine him to a wheelchair for years, connected to breathing tubes and unable to communicate except by painstakingly tapping messages on an iPad. He came to see death as his final adventure.
Lowe’s mind remained active even as his body deteriorated. He collaborated in producing a documentary on the Eiger climb called “Jeff Lowe’s Metanoia” that was released in 2014. Many times in recent years he seemed near death, but last year he completed the Bolder Boulder in his motorized wheelchair, wisecracking that he felt like a cheater because the only thing he ran was the joystick that steered his chair.
“When I was younger, I didn’t really get what the big deal was,” his daughter said. “Now it’s pretty amazing, the things that he’s done. I think it was his calling and he had to do it. I’m really grateful he followed his dreams, especially while he still could.”
