DEFYING DEATH
Mountaineering icon Jeff Lowe battles disease for 17 years
boulder» For a man who was feared to be near death three years ago and several times since, Jeff Lowe has been living a rather rewarding life lately. A mountaineering legend and hero to his generation in the climbing community, Lowe was inducted into the Boulder Sports Hall of Fame last month. Nine days later he steered a motorized wheelchair in the Bolder Boulder and was cheered when his arrival at Folsom Field was shown on the stadium video screen.
“It was just so inspiring and heartwarming,” said his longtime partner, Connie Self. “He’s so funny, later he was like, ‘I felt like I was cheating because all I did was run my joystick.’ ”
Once renowned for his athleticism, grace and vision as a mountaineer with more than 1,000 first ascents, Lowe has lived for 17 years with a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Doctors haven’t been able to arrive at a definitive diagnosis, but the symptoms are similar to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
At age 66, he is wheelchair-bound and cannot speak, communicating by painstakingly tapping one letter at a time on a machine that talks for him. But he keeps fighting for life and is grateful for simple pleasures such as the gorgeous sweep of valley and mountains he enjoys from the deck of the house where he lives north of Boulder.
“He’s just a death-defying person,” Self said. “For people who think climbers have a death wish, Jeff has a life wish.”
A visiting dinner guest recently asked Self how Lowe can stand to live with so many impairments.
“I said, ‘He’s happy to be here, and I think it’s a good lesson for all of us,’ ” Self said. “What we think makes a life worth living and what actually makes a life worth living are very different. He’s still a very good writer, he’s totally there mentally, his granddaughter and daughter live nearby, his friends and family come to visit, (he enjoys) sitting on the deck every evening — he has a good life.”
Last year Lowe tediously typed a beautiful article for the American Alpine Journal. “You can live a life based in fear, and you’ll get more of what you’re afraid of,” he wrote, “or you can base your life in love, and anything is possible.” He encouraged readers to follow a “path with heart” and finished the piece by saying, “Place your confidence in your dreams, not in your nightmares.”
Much of what Lowe has experienced the past five years might seem like an unending nightmare to outsiders. Several times he has been near death because of lung infections. A year ago Self was encouraging friends and family to visit because it seemed Lowe’s time was short. She wound up calling it “the Summer of Love” because so many came to spend time with him. But he’s been largely infectionfree since October.
Lowe was inducted into the Boulder Sports Hall of Fame with runner Arturo Barrios, Bolder Boulder founder Steve Bosley and triathlete Colleen Cannon.
“To be honored by the Boulder athletic community is truly humbling and uplifting,” Lowe tapped out on his talking machine last week. “Walk down the Pearl Street Mall and you will see a minimum of a dozen world-class athletes in half a dozen sports. Climbers in particular have been flocking to Boulder since the ’60s.” Lowe was honored “to be singled out among some of the greatest artists of the vertical, and to follow on the heels of last year’s recipient Lynn Hill, who is a climber I admire most for her strength, focus and personal qualities of warm kindness and compassion.”
Fighting to live
After a rough winter of 2015-16 with frequent infections, Lowe’s loved ones got a big scare the following spring. While Self was on a rare trip away from him to visit an aunt in Missouri, Lowe went into distress because of breathing difficulties. Lowe’s caregiver frantically called 911. Self feared the worst.
“You know, sweetheart, if this is it — if you’re done (fighting) — it’s OK, you can go,” Self told Lowe over the phone while he lay in intensive care at Boulder Community Hospital with aspiration pneumonia. “But I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
Lowe fought through that ordeal and a subsequent stay at a long-term care facility, returning home for that Summer of Love.
“He had a great summer,” Self said. “We enjoyed friends and family. He would get sick, we’d get the antibiotics, he’d clear up and two weeks later he’d be back on them for two weeks, then off for two weeks. That went on until October.”
That’s when they tried a supplement friends had been recommending that was supposed to boost the immune system. He has needed only one round of antibiotics since then.
His mind remains sharp. His most famous climb was the first ascent — solo — in 1991 of a route on the notorious North Face of the Eiger in the Alps which he called “Metanoia.” Last December three European climbers attempted the second ascent but had to retreat because of storms. Intent to try again, they sent pictures to Lowe indicating where they thought the route went, seeking his guidance.
“On Christmas Day, Jeff is sitting there with a pen, red ink on a photo, showing them where it actually went and where they needed to go,” Self said. “He can tell you beta on climbs he did 40, 50 years ago. It’s remarkable the detail he can have.”
Planning for future
Metanoia, which is also the name of a documentary on Lowe’s life that debuted in 2014, is defined as “a fundamental change of thinking or transformative change of heart.” Now Lowe and Self are going through a change of thinking regarding the future, because for the first time in years they feel like they can actually plan for one.
“For the last five years, we have believed Jeff was going to die soon. Clearly, that is not happening. But the mind-set for the last five years has been, we’ll do whatever it takes, make sure he’s comfortable, has what he needs, sees his friends and family and does what he wants so that when he’s ready to go, he can go peacefully. Now we need to make other plans. We need to look at the longterm. He could live another five years or 10 years, so what does that mean?”
For one thing, Self is planning to take the trip to Nepal she has wanted to make for 40 years. She recently read an analogy in a book that hit home.
“Imagine yourself on a log in a river, and you’ve got to stay looking at that log because it’s spinning, but if you don’t look down river, there could be a waterfall coming,” Self said. “I assumed he would be gone by now and I would be back to my normal life.”
Now she can look ahead, and that river doesn’t seem so scary.
“For us it’s a big paradigm shift.” For more information on Lowe, see his website jeffloweclimber.com. To contribute to his medical needs, text 50155 and type Jeff.