On Saturday, October 7, 27-year-old alpinist Hayden Kennedy was skiing with his girlfriend, Inge Perkins, 23, on Imp Peak south of Bozeman, Montana. The pair triggered a slide that buried and killed Perkins. Kennedy survived the slide, but returned home and took his own life. 
 
 Perkins had a beacon, but it was turned off and in her pack, said Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Bozeman. “That’s why she wasn’t found.” 
 
 Hayden “never called 911” to report the slide, Chabot said. “He left a note with locations as to where the avalanche happened. They were incredibly clear directions for where to find her.” 
 
 Early-season avalanches “catch people all the time,” Chabot said. “This was not a particularly huge avalanche” yet “it packed a punch....We had huge storms back in September that put three or four feet of snow on the ground” then another foot around October 1, with high winds that loaded the snow on a firm bed. 
 
 Kennedy’s family released a statement saying that they sorrowfully respected Hayden’s decision and praised their son’s openness to the world while he was alive. 
 
 Perkins was a beloved climber from Bozeman who was working on a degree at Montana State University. “Just like Hayden was someone I looked up to, you were, too,” professional climber Chelsea Rude wrote on Facebook, addressing Perkins. “You two were perfect for each other. Both with the biggest hearts a human can have and smiles that made anyone feel welcome, heard and loved.” 
 
 Trying my best to honor you. Thanks for putting up with my camera guys. A post shared by Michael Lim (@murkytimes) on Oct 10, 2017 at 11:17am PDT 
 
 Kennedy has long been one of the top climbers in the world. Though, unless you were steeped in the minutiae of climbing, you wouldn’t necessarily know it. He avoided most media. When Outside reached out to him four years ago about coverage he replied that he was “just not really interested in being in the mag. I have nothing against Outside but I would rather just be out of the media in general. I think that it distracts and over hypes everything, for me it’s just not worth it. My passion for climbing is my own experience and doesn't need to be blow[n] out of portion.” 
 
 Though his accomplishments were many—from big walls in Mexico to bold first ascents in the Karakoram—he was mostly widely known to the non-climbing world for removing 125 bolts from Cerro Torre’s Compressor Route in Patagonia after making the first fair means ascent of the Southeast Ridge with Jason Kruk in 2012. Casare Maestri had put in and used the bolts to ascend the pillar 42 years before, and many had followed in his path. Some thought the bolts should be left as a monument to history. Kennedy and Kruk sought to return the mountain to its initial state, and were both praised and criticized for that decision. 
 
 In a letter to his son published in the Alpinist shortly after their effort, Michael wrote: “The story of the Southeast Ridge is one of the distance between our ideals and what we are willing to sacrifice to live up to them. As alpinists, we should strive to reach our dream summits with a minimum of means, leaving the least trace of our passage...Chopping the bolts was a reminder that we need to abide by what we say we believe in. For making that decision, some will call you and Jason heroes. Others will call you villains. Don't buy into either narrative.” 
 
 Just a few weeks ago, Kennedy published an essay on the climbing blog Evening Sends that contemplated climbing, loss, and mortality. 
 
 “Over the last few years, as I’ve watched too many friends go to the mountains only to never return, I’ve realized something painful,” he wrote. “It’s not just the memorable summits and crux moves that are fleeting. Friends and climbing partners are fleeting, too. This is the painful reality of our sport, and I’m unsure what to make of it. Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse…I see both light and dark in climbing. Through this recognition, true learning begins and a full awareness of the brevity of our time becomes clearer. It’s difficult to accept the fact that we cannot control everything in life, yet we still try, and maybe our path changes to something totally unexpected…Maybe the most genuine aspects of any tale are the sputterings and the silences, the acknowledgments of failure, the glimmerings in the dark. And maybe one genuine reason to try to share our stories about days we actually send something, when we are alive and at the height of our powers, is to try to bring back what’s past, lost, or gone. Perhaps by doing so, we might find some light illuminating a new way forward.” ||||| Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker in 1995. Photo: Chris Noble/Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation 
 
 On October 5, 1999, an avalanche high on the slopes of Tibet’s 26,289-foot Shishapangma swept down the mountain’s south face, killing Bozeman, Montana’s Alex Lowe—then 40 and easily the best all-around mountaineer of his generation—and expedition cameraman and rising star David Bridges, 29, of Aspen, Colorado. 
 
 Lowe, Bridges, and Conrad Anker—Lowe’s best friend and regular climbing partner—were leading a reconnaissance hike to scope out the couloir they hoped to ski from the mountain’s summit, an objective that would have made their nine-man expedition the first by Americans to ski an 8,000-meter peak. 
 
 As the avalanche struck, Anker ran to the left while Bridges and Lowe ran downhill and right. Anker was partially buried and had a rib snapped and his head gashed open by the ice projectiles that hit him. But he could walk. Below him, in a group that was bringing up the rear, Utah skiers Andrew McLean and Mark Holbrook, along with Bozeman skiers Hans Saari (who died two years later in a ski accident in Chamonix, France) and Kristoffer Erickson*, avoided the avalanche. With Anker, they spent the next two days searching for any sign of Lowe and Bridges. They didn’t find so much as a glove. 
 
 “From my perspective there was just this big white cloud, and then it settled and there was nothing there,” Anker recalled during a phone interview from Bozeman, where he and Jennie landed on April 29 after spending the spring in Nepal. “And it was just so massive and so big. There wasn’t that sense of closure.” 
 
 Anker began helping Lowe’s widow Jenni to raise their three boys, Max, Isaac, and Sam, back in Bozeman. The two, in their shared grief, soon fell in love and were married in 2001. That story was the subject of a memoir by Jenni Lowe-Anker and chronicled in the documentary Meru, which played in theaters across the U.S. last year and made the short list for the 2016 Oscars. 
 
 But now Lowe’s death appears to have a final resolution. Last week, on April 27, some 16 years, 6 months, and 22 days after their disappearance, the bodies of Lowe and Bridges were found by Swiss and German alpinists Ueli Steck, 39, and David Goettler, 37. The two partners are attempting to climb a new route up Shishapangma’s south face this spring. 
 
 Ueli Steck at the base of Everest in April 2012. Photo: Grayson Schaffer 
 
 “It’s kind of fitting that it’s professional climbers who found him,” Anker says. “It wasn’t a yak herder. It wasn’t a trekker. David and Ueli are both cut from the same cloth as Alex and me.” 
 
 “I kind of never realized how quickly it would be that he’d melt out,” says Jenni Lowe-Anker.. “I thought it might not be in my lifetime.” 
 
 Anker and Jenni Lowe-Anker had spent much of the spring in the Khumbu region of Nepal working on the Khumbu Climbing Center (KCC), a project of the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation. They’d missed Steck and Goettler by a day as the two alpinists acclimatized in the Khumbu before heading over to Chinese-controlled Tibet for their climb. (Shishapangma, the world’s 14th-highest mountain, is the only 8,000-meter peak that sits completely inside Tibet.) As Conrad and Jenni were preparing to fly home to Bozeman on the 27th, Anker’s phone rang. It was Goettler, attempting to confirm the identity of the two bodies they’d discovered partially melting out of the glacier. 
 
 “He said, We came across two bodies,” says Anker. “They were close to each other. Blue and red North Face backpacks. Yellow Koflach boots. It was all that gear from that time period. They were pretty much the only two climbers who were there.” 
 
 Anker hasn’t seen photos, and there hasn’t been a conclusive test, but he’s already convinced. “We’re pretty sure it’s them,” he says. 
 
 Unlike the remains of climbers that are sometimes found high on Everest, the bodies of Lowe and Bridges are in a place where they can be recovered. (The body of guide Scott Fischer, a casualty of the 1996 storm on Everest that spawned Into Thin Air, remains on the mountain in line with the wishes of his family.) 
 
 Conrad, Jenni, and the three boys, now grown, are now planning to travel to Tibet during the summer monsoon. They’ll recover the bodies (they haven’t yet been in touch with Bridges’s family) and most likely return to Nyalam, Tibet, the closest town, to hold a ceremony. 
 
 “The proper thing to do will be to take care of his body according to local practices,” says Anker. “They’re still frozen into the ice.” 
 
 “It’s never something you look forward to,” says Jenni. “To see the body of somebody you loved and cared about. But there is a sense that we can put him to rest, and he’s not just disappeared now.” 
 
 This spring, like the last three, has been exceptionally warm and dry in the Himalayas. The increasingly common wind storms that deposit heat-absorbing dust on the glaciers have sped up melting even more. Everest Base Camp, at the head of the Khumbu Glacier in Nepal, has seen running streams and climbers relaxing in shorts and flip-flops, something that usually doesn’t happen until May. That’s one possible explanation for why the bodies could have melted out so quickly. 
 
 For Conrad and Jenni, the event seemed to have added significance, given the recent events in Nepal. “Whether it’s fate or coincidence or timing, you never know,” says Conrad. “The Khumbu is still bereft of tourists, and people in Nepal are still suffering,” says Jenni. “The people there are still so hopeful that there’ll be a good season on Everest and that tourism will return. For us to be up there was a bright spot for them and for us. Conrad made an appearance at Base Camp, and that was meaningful to them and all the people that have worked with us on KCC. And then to have [Alex found on] the very last day. ... I thought that was kind of serendipitous. It was like Alex appearing in a way to say, Hey, good work. I’m done. I’m done now.” 
 
 *Update: An earlier version of this story misspelled Kristoffer Ericsson's name. ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — The bodies of a renowned mountain climber and expedition cameraman who were buried in a Himalayan avalanche 16 years ago have been found. 
 
 The widow of Alex Lowe said in a statement Friday that two climbers attempting to ascend the 26,291-foot Shishapangma in Tibet discovered the remains of two people partially melting out of a glacier. 
 
 The climbers described the clothing and backpacks seen on the bodies to Conrad Anker, who was climbing with Lowe and cameraman David Bridges at the time of the October 1999 avalanche and survived. Anker concluded that the two were Bridges and Lowe, the statement said. 
 
 "Alex and David vanished, were captured and frozen in time. Sixteen years of life has been lived and now they are found. We are thankful," Jenni Lowe-Anker said. 
 
 She married Anker, her husband's friend and fellow elite climber, in 2001. They live in Bozeman, Montana, and run the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation together. 
 
 Anker said the discovery has brought closure and relief to him. 
 
 He told Outside magazine that although he hasn't seen photos of the remains, he's convinced they are those of Lowe and Bridges. 
 
 "They were close to each other. Blue and red North Face backpacks. Yellow Koflach boots. It was all that gear from that time period. They were pretty much the only two climbers who were there," Anker said. 
 
 Lowe, Anker, Bridges and several others were on an expedition to climb Shishapangma, the 14th highest mountain in the world, then ski down it. They were scouting out routes at about 19,000 feet when they saw a slab of snow break free 6,000 feet above them. 
 
 Lowe was regarded as the world's greatest mountain climber when he was swept to his death at age 40. He was known jokingly as "Lungs With Legs" for his incredible strength and stamina. He had made difficult climbs all over the world, including Nepal's Kwangde and Kusum Kanguru, and twice reached the summit of Mount Everest. In Peru, he climbed the southwest buttress of Taulliraju. 
 
 He was credited with rescuing several climbers in Alaska in 1995, a year when six climbers died on Mount McKinley. 
 
 Bridges, 29, of Aspen, Colorado was an accomplished high-altitude climber and cinematographer.
– World-class alpinist Hayden Kennedy and his partner, Inge Perkins, were skiing in Montana on Saturday when an early-season avalanche on Imp Peak near Bozeman took the couple by surprise at 10,000 feet, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The slide buried Perkins, 23, and partially covered Kennedy, 27. He searched in vain but never found Perkins. Then Kennedy headed home and took his own life, Outside reports; his family says Kennedy was unable to deal with the "unbearable loss." Kennedy didn't call 911 but left "incredibly clear directions for where to find her," Doug Chabot of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center tells Outside. Perkins, also an accomplished climber, was wearing a beacon that could have led rescuers to her, but it was turned off, Chabot says. Her body was recovered Monday morning under 3 feet of snow, per the Post Independent. The couple had moved to Bozeman so Perkins could pursue a degree in math and education at Montana State University. Kennedy, hailed in 2014 as maybe "the best young climber on the planet," was studying for an EMT certification. He wrote recently of the pain of seeing "too many friends go to the mountains only to never return … Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse." As tributes flowed to the pair, Kennedy's family says they "sorrowfully" respect his final decision and remembered "an uncensored soul whose accomplishments as a mountaineer were always secondary to his deep friendships and mindfulness." (Another climber survived one avalanche on Everest, but perished on his second ascent.)