Sadly, it seems evident that the time has come to pay a last tribute to my friend Chris. Missing since early November in remote China, she and boyfriend Charlie Fowler appear to have been swept by avalanches while seeking out new and unclimbed peaks to conquer. This is something she did more successfully than any woman in history ever has. Charlie - whom I did not know personally - has been found and identified. Chris remains missing but - at this point - we are certain that she too is lost to us.
Chris began her famous climbing life in Atlanta, alongside many of us. She and I started climbing about the same time and she, her husband Keith, and I did so together very often. Although they moved to Seattle when they bought Mountain Madness after Scott Fischer's death in 1996 (as recounted in the Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air), we in Atlanta always considered her one of our own and took a familial pride in her many accomplishments. Obviously reciprocating our sentiment, she came back often.
Chris went on to become the female world record holder for 8,000 meter peaks. There are only fourteen such peaks in the world, and very few mountaineers of either gender have climbed them all. Even the world's best tend to have ticked only a handful of them. She has climbed Everest and five other of these peaks - far surpassing what most of the world class mountaineers accomplish. She often told me, however, that she had little desire to be the first female to do them all; and her later career bears this out as she sought instead to climb the most remote mountains that had yet to see first ascents. It was this - and her love for the cultures of Asia in particular - that motivated her the most.
What I remember most is how humble she always was. She was unassuming, self-deprecating, and quick to point out your accomplishments when you tried to compliment her...despite her world class stature. Even after she became famous, she never forgot us "little people." A month or so after after Keith's death, when she was ready to discuss it, she called me from Seattle and we did so for almost two hours.
On January 12, 2007, the Atlanta climbing community had our yearly gathering at the Concourse Athletic Club in Atlanta. It is here that one can always count on seeing climbers from twenty and thirty years back. It's an event that has become a reunion of sorts for many of us...and I have long made it a point to be there despite any travel I might be doing. This year, Marjorie set up a table for Chris with candles, a tribute book, and many pictures of our friend and hero. The Climbing world's own reporter Michelle Hiskey (an internationally prize-winning journalist who was adopted by the climbing community after Jeff Wingo's death) turned out - as she can be counted on to do - and spoke to many of us....gathering info for her own tribute to a mountaineering icon.
We love you, Chris. I can't believe that both you and Keith are now gone. I miss you both.
Search Efforts: http://fowlerboskoff.blogspot.com/