My dad’s best friend saw him die on a mountain – then married my mum and adopted us kids
THEY were best friends – two stars of the extreme sports world who bungee- jumped off mountains and clung one-handed to dizzying ice cliffs.
Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker thought they would never be separated — until an avalanche buried them and only one of the pair emerged alive.
But while Conrad escaped with his life, he also went on to step into a dead man’s shoes — marrying Alex’s widow and becoming “dad” to his three kids, to the horror of those in the mountaineering community.
Alex’s eldest son Max, 33, has now made a moving documentary about the trauma his family suffered — and the extraordinary way one man gradually took over the life of his dead best friend.
Max now calls Conrad “Dad” and refers to his biological father as Alex.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun ahead of the release of Torn on Friday, he says: “The way my mum and Conrad came together after Alex’s death and their choices and the controversy that surrounded their marriage in the mountaineering community — those things were hard for her to talk about.”
In 1999, Alex, then 40, and Conrad, then 36, had been attempting to ski down Tibet’s 26,000ft Mount Shishapangma — the first Americans to do so — when disaster struck.
As well as taking Alex’s life, the avalanche killed their cameraman.
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Battered and bloodied, Conrad — the sole survivor — had to telephone Alex’s wife Jenni to tell her that her husband was not coming home.
What made that call even tougher was the knowledge that Alex had wished he was taking his three young sons to Disneyland rather than completing the expedition to promote an outdoor clothing firm.
Suffering from survivor’s guilt, Conrad wondered what he could do for Alex.
The climber, now 59, not only took the grieving boys to the theme park, he also became a shoulder for Alex’s wife Jenni to cry on.
After three months the pair found their passion growing — and within two years they were married.
Conrad was engaged to a fellow climber at the time of Alex’s death.
His decision to step into his dead friend’s place led to a lot of bitterness among mountain climbers — so much so that the couple received hate mail.
And while Jenni’s two youngest sons, Isaac and Sam, wanted Conrad to become their dad, her eldest found it hard to accept.
Max, who was ten at the time, says: “When Alex was killed, my trust was broken. I always trusted that he would come home and when he died that day I understood death and I was also still a kid.
“In my child’s mind I held that belief that everything would turn out alright in the end. That Dad would come home from his adventures, which I looked up to him for living.
‘WHEN ALEX WAS KILLED, MY TRUST WAS BROKEN’
“When he died I didn’t know how to extend that trust in all my relationships.”
On first meeting Alex, artist Jenni thought he was a “wild thing” so desperate for adventure that he would get up before dawn to tackle a mountain.
She did not expect the relationship to last, but immediately said yes when he asked her to marry him.
Alex was nicknamed The Lungs With Legs and The Mutant due to his incredible stamina — and he put that to life-saving use when he carried an injured climber off an Alaskan mountain in 1995.
His daring reputation earned him a contract with outdoor apparel brand North Face, making him one of the first people to make a living as an adrenaline athlete.
Conrad, who joined him on the team, said: “I was in Alex’s shadow.” Videos of the pair defying death at high altitudes were shared across the internet and their reputation soared.
Max explains: “Conrad and Alex were some of the first professional athletes in the climbing game.
“They got paid by these brands that recognised they could attach their products to these names that were out there doing these things that had not been done before.
“The extreme sports world is this goal-driven space — you want to always be stepping up your game.”
But going on expeditions in far-flung places such as Antarctica and the Himalayas meant that Alex had little time to spend with his family in Bozeman, Montana.
He always carried a photo of the three boys and Jenni with him and missed them on his long trips. Alex, though, was like a “caged animal” when he spent too long at home.
Max says: “He was angsty and depressed when he wasn’t reaching for this next thing.”
Mount Shishapangma has claimed the lives of 31 climbers — and Conrad described the idea of skiing down it in October 1999 as “crazy.”
It was during a scouting trip up the 26,335ft rock with cameraman David Bridges, 29, that disaster struck.
Conrad says: “We looked up and saw an avalanche had triggered.
“David and Alex went in one direction and I went in another. The snow picked me up, and I thought, ‘I’m going to die today.’ ”
Despite having suffered head injuries, two broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, Conrad managed to claw himself out of the snow and get back to camp to raise the alarm.
He led a 20-hour search for his friends, but without a homing beacon it proved to be futile.
For the first couple of days Jenni clung to the hope that her husband would emerge alive because “he was Superman.”
The loss of his best friend left Conrad feeling suicidal and wishing he had been the one who had died on the inhospitable mountainside.
Vowing to take care of Alex’s family, he drove to their home for Christmas and tried to comfort the boys.
Sam, four years younger than Max, soon asked Conrad: “Will you be my dad?” — but the eldest boy was not so keen on his constant presence.
Max was upset when he saw his mum and Conrad kissing in their family home just three months after his dad had perished.
He tells his mum in the film: “I can’t imagine how you came out of it so quickly like you did.”
Jenni talks about her relationship with Conrad, saying: “Being close to him felt like being close to Alex. It felt like an old shoe.”
Critics thought their wedding ceremony in Italy just two years after Alex’s death was too soon — and Max says it also took him several years to accept Conrad as his dad.
He said he wondered: “Was he maybe stuck with us because of his survivor’s guilt?”
‘PULLING WEDDING RING OFF HIS FINGER WAS SO HARD’
Max explains: “My life had overlapped with Alex’s a lot more and Sam had accepted this life with Conrad was his life.
“More than me, he left Alex behind and held more resentment towards Alex.”
That bitterness towards their dead father came from a feeling that he should never have left them to go on a dangerous adventure.
Max says: “It was resentment for the choices he made that landed us in this position of him existing as a story for our whole lives, which we largely didn’t have a hand in.
“People knew us as the sons of this man we barely even knew.”
Isaac, who was three when his dad died, does not remember him at all.
Even after Max accepted Conrad as his dad, old wounds resurfaced in 2016 when a climber spotted two coloured dots on Mount Shishapangma.
The melting snow had revealed the final resting place of Alex and David.
The family flew out to Tibet to be there when the bodies were carried down on stretchers.
Due to the freezing temperatures, their remains had not decomposed 17 years on.
Jenni decided she needed to take one last look at her dead husband who had his wedding ring pressed against his heart.
She says: “I pulled it off his finger. It was the hardest thing. I slipped it on to my hand and put mine into his.”
Just a couple of months later, Conrad suffered a heart attack at 20,000ft while clinging to a wall of ice in the Himalayas. With the help of his climbing partner, he made it down alive and to a hospital.
Even that has not made Conrad give up on expeditions in cold climates. Max says: “It is similar to Alex in the sense that I know he wouldn’t be who he is to us if he stopped doing that thing.”
Even though he loves to ski, climb and mountain bike, the filmmaker is not hooked on risk-taking like his dad and step-dad.
Max says: “Having grown up in the mountains, there is no feeling like knowing you are close to death and surviving it.
“I definitely haven’t pushed as hard as Alex and Conrad did.
“I know the sharp end — when you lose that deal and the repercussions on those that you leave behind.”
Read More on The Sun
- Torn (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow
Brave... or just crazy?
CONRAD ANKER
- In 1992, with his climbing partner Jay Smith, he became the first person to climb Mount Craddock, the third-highest peak in Antarctica
- Anker has reached the summit of Mount Everest three times. The third time he did it without additional oxygen and the second he wore a tweed jacket and hobnailed boots in a recreation of George Mallory’s ill-fated 1924 climb of the world’s tallest mountain
- In 2016 he scaled the 1,500ft Shark’s Fin granite wall on India’s 21,000ft Meru Peak – never done before
ALEX LOWE
- Made the first climb of the northwest face of 20,623ft Great Trango Tower in Pakistan – a treacherous vertical slab of granite
- He reached the summit of Everest twice – in 1990 and 1993
- In 1993, Alex beat Conrad to the top of 22,972ft Khan-Tengri Peak in Kyrgyzstan in record time. The old record ascent was 14 hours 30 minutes, but Alex did it in ten hours eight minutes, ahead of Conrad’s time of 12 hours 13 minutes.
