The unbroken story and photos by Max Lowe
L: Porters walk along a precipice overlooking Thamserku and Khangtaiga. R: The cairn honoring Alex Lowe looks out over Tauche, Cholatse, and Ama Dablam.
The raw sound of thousands of pounds of rock and snow crashing like a raging torrent of whitewater reverberates off of canyon walls and strikes a guttural fear in me. Lying on my back staring through the fog of my own breath and into the darkness of the tent ceiling, my thoughts drift to my father in his last minutes. The din of the glacial avalanche dies into the cold still night air. I can’t imagine the feeling of terror and the scramble to move up, down, back or forward, somewhere out of the cascade of snow and ice crashing toward you. My father died 10 days before my 11th birthday in a massive avalanche on the slopes of Shishapangma, a peak in the Tibetan Himalaya. I traveled there in the spring of 2012, into the high Himalaya in Nepal, following in his footsteps. As I hiked through the winding valleys along trails skirting 6,000-meter peaks of snow, ice and rock, I realized I was entering the otherworld of my childhood. As a child, my father Alex Lowe was with me half the time and on the other side of the planet for the other. I learned of the places he went—Nepal, Antarctica, Baffin Island and New Guinea—through postcards stamped with unrecognizable postage and always his signature and love. Alex came to this place, the Khumbu region of Nepal, many times. He truly had a passion for the Himalaya, and
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