AP News, December 28th, 2006
Jon Krakauer's best-selling book "Into Thin Air" chronicles a disastrous climb up Mount Everest that killed the much-loved owner of adventure company Mountain Madness.
Employees at the company were hoping Wednesday that a climb in China hasn't ended with another tragedy within the company, and that a body found on a remote peak was not that of Mountain Madness owner Christine Boskoff or her climbing partner, Charlie Fowler of Norwood, Colo.
But as searchers prepared to return to the site where a gray boot was spotted sticking out of the snow, it seemed likely that the two had been smothered by an avalanche.
"We're all tense," company president Mark Gunlogson said Wednesday, pausing frequently as his lips trembled. "We've been involved in this rescue for over two weeks. We've kept our emotions on the back burner. There's going to be a moment when we can let the emotional side of things surface."
Boskoff, a top female climber, and Fowler, a well-known climbing guide and photographer, were reported missing after they failed to return to the United States on Dec. 4. The search was hampered initially because the two did not leave details of where they planned to climb.
Arlene Burns, a friend of the missing climbers, said the body was found at the 17,390-foot level on Genie Mountain, also known as Genyen Peak, not far from the Sichuan border with Tibet. The mountain is 20,354 feet tall.
Boskoff bought Mountain Madness in 1997, shortly after the death of its founder, Scott Fischer. Fischer was one of the guides leading climbers on Mount Everest in May 1996 when a fierce storm hit, killing him and seven others _ a tale Krakauer survived to tell in his best-seller.
Gunlogson started with the company as a guide in 1993, and remembers how quickly news of Fischer's death came, in a phone call from a base camp on Everest.
This time, the search has been a drawn-out hunt for clues to where Fowler and Boskoff might hve gone: Staff at Mountain Madness and in Colorado, where the U.S. search coordinators are based, sifted through old e-mails and worked with Chinese officials, who interviewed rural villagers in hopes of tracing their travels.
Mountain Madness also contacted former Gov. Gary Locke and Gov. Chris Gregoire, who asked government officials in China to support search efforts, Gunlogson said.
Gunlogson and company director David Jones appeared exhausted during interviews Wednesday. For luck they strung Tibetan prayer flags across Jones' downtown Seattle office. Maps of Genyen Peak were posted on the wall. They had scrawled the names and phone numbers of search-and-rescue contacts, as well as other details of the effort, across a panel of dry-erase boards.
Gunlogson credited Boskoff with turning Mountain Madness from the brink of financial ruin to a profitable enterprise that attracts 700 to 800 clients a year, who pay anywhere from several hundred dollars for guided climbs in Washington state to $55,000 for a guided climb of Mount Everest. She pressed for the company's 30 guides to become certified, and along with Gunlogson expanded the climb offerings to attract more customers.
Boskoff twice reached the peak of Everest and had summitted the tallest peaks on five other continents, but she preferred to explore the unnamed, unclimbed mountains of southwestern China, Jones said.
She was also drawn to the region's culture. Boskoff and Fowler stopped at Genyen Monastery on Nov. 12 and told the monks they would return in four days, but never did, searchers said.
"It is the freedom, it is the challenge, both physical and mental, and the ability to go into places that no human has never been. She's more interested in going to the edge of the map," Jones said. "The fact that she was in beautiful, pristine mountains, unclimbed areas, and climbing with someone she knew, trusted and loved _ I think she would be happy with this as a way to go."
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On the Net:
http://www.mountainmadness.com
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Associated Press Writer Scott McDonald in Beijing contributed to this story.
