The bodies of famous mountain climbers Alex Lowe and David Bridges have been found 16 years after a Himalayan avalanche killed them.
Hikers climbing Tibetan mountain Shishapangma, the world's 14th tallest mountain, found the bodies Wednesday, still encased in blue ice,
People magazine reported.
“Alex and David vanished, were captured and frozen in time. Sixteen years of life has been lived and now they are found. We are thankful,” Lowe’s widow, Jennifer Lowe-Anker said,
according to the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation website.
Professional climbers David Goettler and Ueli Steck found the bodies of Lowe and Bridges and called climber Conrad Anker to describe what they found. Anker was Lowe’s best friend and was on the expedition at the time of the October 1999 avalanche. He escaped with injuries while Lowe and Bridges vanished.
“It’s kind of fitting that it’s professional climbers who found him,”
Anker told Outside magazine. “It wasn’t a yak herder. It wasn’t a trekker. David and Ueli are both cut from the same cloth as Alex and me.”
Lowe’s widow married Anker in 2001. Anker adopted the couple’s three sons.
Lowe was 40 at the time of the avalanche and described by Outside magazine as “easily the best all-around mountaineer of his generation.” Lowe and Anker were scouting the mountain with a nine-man expedition and hoped to ski from the summit.
“From my perspective there was just this big white cloud, and then it settled and there was nothing there,” Anker told Outside. “And it was just so massive and so big. There wasn’t that sense of closure.”
Lowe was from Bozeman, Montana. David Bridges, a 29-year-old Aspen, Colorado, man, was the expedition cameraman.
The documentary “Meru,” based on a memoir written by Lowe-Anker, was released last year.
Lowe was an experienced mountaineer who had climbed Mount Everest twice and the Matterhorn,
CNN reported.
Lowe’s early use of the Internet helped propel him and the sport of climbing to wider fame,
The Guardian reported.
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