Jeff Lowe

Even in photographs, Jeff Lowe’s easy grace is indelible. In one image, taken on Ama Dablam in 1979, Lowe stands casually on a rocky ridge, the Himalaya disappearing into the mist below, his blonde locks flowing from a knit cap and weight balanced perfectly, improbably, on one knee and a long leg reaching back to a flake of rock. The stance should look precarious, but in the photograph Lowe seems supremely at ease.

That athleticism was a hallmark of Lowe’s climbing style, together with his versatility and creativity. He rode those attributes to more than one thousand first ascents around the world, including a stunning solo on Ama Dablam in Nepal, the paradigm-smashing first ascent and subsequent first solo of Bridalveil Falls, and Metanoia, his life-altering direttissima on the North Face of the Eiger. Those accomplishments cemented Lowe’s status as the finest American alpinist of his generation, but he will be best remembered for the way he carried himself after a mysterious illness stripped away