In Praise of Jeff Lowe

By Chris Van Leuven

June 27, 2017, Lake Valley, Colorado. Jeff Lowe and I are in the shadows on his deck on top of a small hill overlooking bucolic green hillsides and scattered lakes. A few birds chirp in the background, but otherwise all is quiet except for Jeff ’s caregivers chatting in the kitchen. Jeff ’s partner, Connie Self, joins us in the townhouse. It’s their temporary residence, a place for them to stay before moving onto the next stage. I’m here to learn about Jeff ’s brand, Lowe Alpine, and his legacy in the outdoor industry.

Lowe, 66, is wearing brown corduroys and a plaid button-up. His eyes look kind behind black glasses and a light beard. He’s gotten around with the assistance of a wheelchair since a neurodegenerative disease he was diagnosed with in 1998 has since robbed his ability to walk and speak (he has an open tracheotomy in his neck that drains into a Ziploc bag filled with tissues). But his mind is still clear. He has limited use of his hands, and he uses them to touch-type on a tablet equipped with a computerized voice that reads his words aloud. These days he’s working on his autobiography and looking for distributors for his film Jeff Lowe’s Metanoia.

“He can think and write and make facial expressions that keep us laughing,” Connie says.

Born to Ralph and Rlgene in 1950 in Ogden, Utah, and one of eight children, Lowe climbed the Grand Teton at age seven (then the youngest ascent of the mountain). At 15, he was climbing 5.10, one of the highest grades of the time. Along with his brothers and cousins, he frequented The Grand in order to prepare for even bigger climbs.

“My first [Yosemite] Valley trip was 1967,” the voice on his tablet says. “And my first climb was the Chouinard-Herbert on Sentinel.” The Chouinard-Herbert is the 1,400-foot line immortalized by Alex Honnold’s free-solo ascent, that was featured on “60 Minutes” in 2012.

“I did the Salathé Wall [on Yosemite’s El Capitan] in 1969 for the seventh ascent, and the next year, the fourth ascent of the North America Wall. After that, I spent big wall time in Zion and the mountains of the western U.S. and Canada,” he says.

His words greatly underscore his achievements. During the ‘60s, the North America Wall was considered the most difficult big wall in the world. It’s like saying the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana was good at throwing a ball. He wasn’t just good; he was so good he defined the sport.

Jeff’s climbing resume spans 40 years and encompasses all of climbing’s disciplines—rock, big wall, free solo, ice, mixed, and alpine—at the elite level. He was awarded the Piolet d’Or, Golden Piton Lifetime Achievement Award, the Outdoor Inspiration Lifetime Achievement Award, and is recognized in the Centennial Celebration of 100 best climbers in 100 years. He’s credited with well over 1,000 first ascents.

“He’s the greatest alpinist to come out of North America,” author and climber Pete Takeda proclaims in Jeff Lowe’s Metanoia.

The film revolves around his greatest achievement, an 1,800-meter route on Switzerland’s Eiger rated VII, 5.10, M6, A4. He climbed it over nine days in the winter of 1991—an ascent the American Mountaineering Museum called, “perhaps the boldest solo mountain climb in history.” It was a culmination of his 25 years of climbing experience. And he used his innovative gear designs to do it.

Back at lake view, a kestrel and dove break the conversation and pause in the air before landing on the house.

“In Outside’s [2012] article ‘The Most Influential Gear of All Time,’ four out of 100were designs by Jeff and his brothers,” says Connie. “They were climbers, innovators with high standards. A lot of their inspiration came from their own needs.” These items include the Lowe Alpine Systems Expedition Internal Frame Pack (1968), Hummingbird Modular Ice Axe (1972), Latok Tuber Belay Device (1982), and Latok Diamond Softshell Pullover (1989). It was on his historic climbs that Lowe learned just what gear needed to be able to do when put to the test, to the breaking point.

Lowe’s climbs, like his gear inventions, were ahead of their time. In addition to his success in the alpine, he put up first ascents on the sandstone big walls of Zion National Park. Between the late ’60s and early ’70s, he authored a dozen new routes—during a time when many of the greatest lines were there for the taking—including the iconic 1,200-foot Moonlight Buttress, which he climbed with Mike Weis in 1971. Johnny Woodward and Peter Croft free climbed the 5.12d-rated route in 1992. Honnold, regarded as world’s greatest free soloist, climbed the route sans rope on April 1, 2008. It was an ascent that shocked the climbing community.

In 1994, Lowe established a route that forever changed mixed climbing. To climb Octopussy, above Vail, Colorado, he employed an emerging technique called the Figure 4. A Figure 4 requires hooking a leg over an arm, becoming semi-inverted in the process, and leveraging off the elbow to extend reach and snag the next placement. Octopussy ascends a several-bodylengths- wide limestone roof to reach a hanging curtain of ice. It marked the world’s first “M,” or mixed ice and rock route, rated at M8.

This is what Mountain Project has to say about the route today: “Though the route does not get climbed often, it still awaits those with a sense of adventure and perhaps a little insanity.”

After Octopussy, Lowe continued pushing the standards of mixed climbing, often on dangerously run-out terrain. This includes his and Ed Palin’s line, Gorillas in the Mist, in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Over three pitches, Gorillas ascends ice that is no more than four-inches thick. The ice is so thin, like a clear plastic bag, that black rock is clearly visible behind it.

“When people pick the granddaddy of mixed routes, the purest, most eye-catching, adrenaline pumped mixed route in the region, Jeff ’s visionary climb is the unanimous choice,” Palin wrote of the route in Mark Kroese’s book Fifty Favorite Climbs: The Ultimate North American Tick List.

Jeff Lowe was also the first to bring sport climbing to the masses, when he organized the televised International Sport Climbing Championships in Snowbird, Utah, from 1988 to 1990. His motivation to host the event, which was held on the side of the Cliff Lodge with artificial holds, was two-fold. One, he wanted to protect the delicate resource, the world’s crags—especially after witnessing the environmental impacts from competitions he’d seen in Europe—and two, to popularize the sport. Thanks in part to him, the 2020 Olympics will feature climbing on artificial walls in the disciplines of sport, bouldering, and speed.

The Ouray Ice Festival, which Lowe also founded, is going into its 23rd year. Today the park contains more than 200 climbs over three miles. Ice climbing became a recognized sport in 1974, when Jeff and Mike Weis climbed the 400-foot-high Bridalveil Falls near Telluride.

On the porch, with the sun setting, the conversation turns to our love of climbing and our partners. We talk about his longtime friends: Mike Weis, his partner of 50 years, cousin George Lowe, and Jon Krakauer.

“The climbing tribe is amazing,” Lowe says.

“Climbing was an important part of our relationship,” says Weis. “But that’s not what it’s all about. It’s about a personal relationship in a beautiful setting where we climbed. You can waste a beautiful day reading his resume, but I’m sure he would prefer that you spend the day visiting someplace wild, either alone or with friends.”

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