The Times Magazine 53vaunted, almost mythical figure who had left
their lives a very long time ago.
But then one day, he returned. In April
2016, Anker received a call from a Swiss
mountaineer named Ueli Steck who was on
the southwest face of Shishapangma. During
his expedition, something had caught Steck’s
eye: a jarring splash of colour in what should
have been a vista of white and grey. Moving
closer to investigate, it became horribly clear
what he had found: two bodies still in their
climbing gear.
“He said, ‘I think we’ve found David and
Alex. They’ve melted out of the glacier,’ ” says
Anker. Suddenly, for everybody, more than a
decade and a half’s worth of grief, doubt and
unspoken pain was laid bare. Anker sighs.
“Everything resurfaced.”I meet Max and his mother, Jenni, in the
restaurant of a central London hotel. Max is
tall, lightly bearded and has a sonorous but
gentle voice. Jenni is bright-eyed and warm
and wears her long grey hair in a thick plait.
They are visiting from Montana and there is
something of the frontier about them. A stolid
Americanness. You can imagine them sitting
together, straight-backed, in an old sepia
photograph. The survivors of a man who
went missing in the mountains.
After the discovery of Lowe’s body, Max,
who is a film-maker, began to document the
impact it had on his family. As they all travelled
to Tibet in order to recover his biological
father’s remains, it became increasingly clear
that deep, unprocessed emotions were being
dredged up within everybody.
“I was thinking about all the things I had
always observed, about my mum and how
she still held on to Alex, and Conrad with this
survivor’s guilt and imposter syndrome,” he
says. “But as a kid, I never knew how to help
them address it and work through it. But as a
director and a storyteller, I saw this door.”
The result is a feature-length documentary
called Torn, in which the life and character
of Lowe are examined, the circumstances of
Jenni and Anker’s relationship explored and
the many unvoiced questions and resentments
of the three sons finally aired. It is a study
in grief, love and family life, and it is all
the more affecting for its simple relatability
despite the dramatic circumstances of Lowe’s
disappearance and return.
During the documentary, everybody is
interviewed by Max – probed, questioned
and sometimes challenged. How, for instance,
could his mother move on so quickly? Was
Anker acting out of genuine love or just a
sense of duty and obligation? “Max likes to
say, ‘Maybe we should just have gone to family
therapy,’ ” says Jenni, smiling. “Along the way
we certainly had some conflict that we had to
work through. But we all wanted to help Max.For him, it was this exploration and figuring
out of who Alex was to him. And I saw how
important that was.”
Alex Lowe, we learn, was a magnetic,
energetic character who possessed what
seems like a compulsive desire to be outdoors.
“He had this primal need to see what was
on the other side of that river or at the top
of a mountain,” says Anker, who is speaking
from Antarctica where he is about to lead
an expedition. “He had this very strong sense
of adventure.”
Jenni first encountered Lowe when he
walked into the shop where she was working.
It was a case of instant attraction – she says
she remembers thinking, “This guy is like
out of a dream” – and when they hooked
up, it was more in the expectation of a “fun
fling” than anything else. After several years
of adventure together, though, they married
and started a family. Even after the birth of
all three sons, Lowe continued to travel the
world on mountaineering expeditions in some
of the most dangerous places on earth. And
Jenni accepted this.
“I could see how much joy it brought him.
I completely understood it. It was his purpose.
It was where he found meaning,” she says.
“I admired that.” So did Max. “I grew up
wanting to be Alex,” he says. “He was my hero.”
When Lowe vanished on Shishapangma,
the ten-year-old Max found it impossible to
let go of the possibility – the fantasy – that
his father may one day return alive. But when
interviewing his younger brothers about their
memories of Lowe, he was surprised to find
that they could both recall far more about
their time with their father than he could.
“I think for whatever reason, I kind of shut
that part of myself down,” he says. “Because
after Alex died, I would sit in those memories.
I’d sit in his car and listen to the songs that he
used to play, just to kind of punish myself. And
I think at some point thereafter, I just turned
all that off. Because it was just too much.”
Jenni, who is sitting beside her son, says
that her biggest concern about the whole film
project was that Max would question the love
that Lowe had felt for him. That he would
come away thinking that his biological father
had faced a choice between a steady life with
his family or a life of danger on the mountains
and had ultimately chosen the latter.
“But he loved you fiercely. And he
didn’t want to die,” she says. “He didn’t
want to put us through what Max saw as
this misery and sadness. I don’t think Alex
ever envisioned that.”
She thinks the fact that Max had loved
and admired his father so much only made
the circumstances of his disappearance all
the more hurtful. She looks across at her son,
who is studying the coffee table between us.
“You trust someone, when you give themLowe and his family in Venice after a stint guiding
climbers in Italy’s Dolomite mountains
Jenni and Anker on a visit to Shishapangma, 2002
Anker receiving medical aid after the fateful avalanche