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By Justin Housman | January 30, 2020

Katie
on January 30, 2020 at 10:03 am

Lynn Martel
on January 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm

Dave King
on January 30, 2020 at 11:36 pm

Mary Watzang
on February 3, 2020 at 7:26 pm

Sydney Freeman
on February 4, 2020 at 3:17 pm

Nic Strohmeyer
on March 22, 2021 at 8:08 am

Ody Anderson
on March 22, 2021 at 8:57 am

Josephine Johnson
on February 6, 2020 at 9:52 pm

Stephen
on March 7, 2020 at 9:10 pm

Justin Housman
on March 22, 2021 at 9:15 am

THE DEEPER YOU GET, THE DEEPER YOU GET
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“I didn’t see how we were going to get out of it alive,” Charlotte Fox said in Jon Krakauer’s book “ Into Thin Air .” “The cold was so painful, I didn’t think I could endure it anymore. I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly.”
That distressing memory was of the May 1996 blizzard and subsequent tragedy on Everest that killed 8 climbers as part of two expedition teams. Fox was on lead climber Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness team. After summiting on May 10, Fox and a handful of fellow climbers began descending in the late afternoon as snow began to fall. Within several hours, the weather had deteriorated into full-scale blizzard conditions. Fox was part of a crew that had become disoriented in the whiteout conditions and winds screaming at over 70 mph.
I thought, ‘Well, old girl, it’s been a good ride. No regrets.’
In the evening, exhausted and freezing, Fox and company formed the now infamous “huddle,” sitting together for some small measure of warmth and to keep from wandering off the mountain. While eight climbers either succumbed to exposure or fell into oblivion, Fox survived the night. It was her 39th birthday.
She went on to climb two more 8,000-meter peaks in the years to come. But her terrifying experience on Everest had scarred Fox. For years after the ordeal she drove around her Colorado home with a personalized license plate on her vehicle that clearly communicated her feelings about climbing the highest peak in the world. It read, simply: NEVEREST.
While a few of the climbers during that ill-fated expedition had little or no experience tackling climbs above 8,000 meters, (including Krakauer), Fox was not among them. When Fox summited Everest in 1996, she became the first American woman to successfully climb three 8,000-meter peaks. In 1994, she’d cleared the top of Pakistan’s Gasherbrum II; the next year she summited Cho Oyu, along the China-Nepal border.
Unlike many who climb Everest, or who check the world’s highest peaks off a life list, Fox wasn’t setting out to be a record holder. She’d never even seriously considered climbing the world’s tallest mountain until invited on the 1996 expedition. “Mount Everest had never been a goal of mine,” she wrote in the American Alpine Journal in 1997. “I regarded it as too much of a circus and overly popular with wannabes.”
Fox was born in 1957 about as far from the mountaineering community as one could be—Greensboro, North Carolina. Her father was Jared Fox, founder of apparel company Blue Bell, which eventually created the Wrangler Jeans empire. Fox went to college in Raleigh, North Carolina, but soon lit out for the West. Dreaming of the mountains, Fox moved to Colorado just after finishing school. She’d planned, as so many do, to spend only a year or so there. Do some skiing, enjoy the alpine environment and then move on. But then she never left. “That’s where the mountain climbing began,” said her mother.
Fox was comfortable in alpine environments, pushing her body in poor weather at extreme altitudes. For 30 years Fox worked in ski patrol in Aspen and Telluride, where she was known to skin up to the top of the mountain before clocking in for a full day of work on the slopes, just because she could. Fox climbed every 14er in Colorado, all 54 of them. She climbed the tallest mountains South America has to offer, then went down to Antarctica to scale Mt. Vinson on her way to nabbing all Seven Summits.
As one might expect from a lifetime spent pushing her limits in the mountains and surrounding herself with friends equally accustomed to life or death expeditions, Fox endured her share of tragedies, even had her Everest climb gone without incident. In 1993, her boyfriend Mark Bebie died during an ice climb. In 2004, Fox’s husband, Reese Martin, was killed while paragliding. “I have never been mad at Mark and Reese for dying in their pursuit of living,” Fox told Rock and Ice magazine, “since I very much believe in having the same intensity of life.”
It would have been simple for Fox to have decided after that 1996 horror show on Everest that she was finished with high altitude climbing. Understandable, maybe even commendable. But that wasn’t in Fox’s nature. A tough, gritty climber, Fox understood and accepted the risks of mountaineering. Even after staring down, and ultimately coming to terms with death high on the frozen slopes of Everest, Fox continued to climb big mountains. She summited the 8th highest peak in the world, Manaslu, in the Nepalese Himalaya, in 2016. Dhaulagiri, the 7th highest peak, came next in 2017. In all, Fox found the roof of 5 8,000-meter mountains in her climbing career. If death were to come, it would come.
“I thought, ‘Well, old girl, it’s been a good ride,’ ” Fox said about the night on Everest when she was huddled in the black of night, too cold and disoriented to push on. “No regrets.”
Fox, a woman for whom a dicey pitch at 25,000 feet was, if not routine, at least well-practiced, died in 2018 when she fell from the top of ice-slicked stairs at her Telluride home. She was 61 years old, and just a year removed from her most recent 8,000-meter climb.
Though she ended up climbing the world’s biggest peaks, Fox, a girl from North Carolina who came out to the Rockies and had her mind blown and her whole life changed, just loved mountains. After her ordeal on Everest, she reflected in her essay for the American Alpine Club:
“I’m three for three on 8,000ers. Pretty damn good odds. Time to go to some lower peaks to climb more technical routes with just a few friends. You can just as easily get killed there, but with so many mountains in this world, why not mix it up? Altitude isn’t everything. Except on Everest.”
People criticize my choices in dangerous hobbies and hiking or backpacking alone as a woman. I’ve always told them, “I live alone. I’m in more danger in my own home than I am on the mountains. The mountains are full of people to find you and help. At my house no one is going to happen to find me when I fall down my stairs” When she died a couple years ago I felt justified in my reasoning.
Thanks for writing about her. I had the pleasure of meeting her once. Her energy was infectious. A bright light for sure!
Great article. I knew that she was an accomplished climber before Everest in 96 but didn’t know that she continued to climb at a high level. I also didn’t know that she had died at all – and that it was right outside her doorstep is striking and I don’t really know what to think of that.
Was good to read of her before and beyond 96, though my one issue is with the sentence “While a few of the climbers during that ill-fated expedition had little or no experience tackling climbs above 8,000 meters, (including Krakauer), Fox was not among them.” Fine remark, worthwhile to point out, except I’m not sure the intent of referencing Krakauer in brackets here?
If the point of this was to sneak in a “deservedness to be on the mountain ore than Krakauer” I ask you this: If she, or every other client for that matter, was as strong and proficient climber as Jon, does anyone even die? Does the ’96 Disaster occur to that extent, or even at all, if they all had his capabilities? Do Rob, Scott and the climbing Sherpa’s need to over exert themselves supporting individual ambitions, rendering them useless later on to others in need?
There’s a lot of writers who like to pick the “If Jon wasn’t there” low hanging fruit, but the fact if clients had his climbing ability and independence and familiarity on mountains, the frickan death tally is what actually drops into thin air.
Someone sent me the link to the article, I’m one of Foxy’s good friends and on the Snowmass ski patrol where we patrolled together for over 20 years. Just wanted to say I had a plaque with her old leather patrol belt made, and is now on the High Alpine patrol station. It is removable from the plaque, has a lot of articles, pictures, hand written letters, stickers. I will add this article as well. Check it out if you are skiing at Snowmass. I miss her so much it hurts! Love you Foxy! Syd
That is awesome Syd. I can’t wait to check it out. I miss all of you.
Syd, Foxy was the absolute best. I miss all of you guys at the Snowmass Patrol. You gals were/are a force to be reckoned with.
I think mention of her demise at 61 after falling down a flight of stairs at her home in Telluride would have been in keeping with the spirit of who she really was. Those 4.5 flights of 77 wooden stairs apparently were her daily reminder of the accomplishments of her life. Can you imagine the memories they must have evoked, and the memories they sadly extinguished for good?
I met and knew Charlotte by way of a good friend. They lived together that first year in Aspen and became close, lifetime friends. He returned to the east coast after that year. Charlotte never even considered it. She knew she belonged in the big mountains. The late 80s, early 90s we would take long ski vacations every spring, often staying with Charlotte, who was the ultimate host, so generous with her time and genuine friendship. Her passion for adventure, life, the mountains was so infectious and real…she became a secret hero of mine. I followed her climbing career closely. Her tragic death destroyed me for a long time. Thanks for the article.
BEWARE: You have written about EVEREST 96 and summoned the KRAKauer. Within 24 hours you will receive a 10,000 word DEMAND for retraction in which you will have 48 hours to respond or a 50,000 word essay will be released upon your soul. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
We have the severed head of Medusa and a winged Pegasus, will that be enough defense?
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