Waiting for Fischer

For those of us lucky enough to have known Scott Fischer, the news of his death has played itself out like one long, very bad dream. One minute, we were toasting his trip to the top of the world; the next, we were grappling with the improbable, that he would not be coming back down.

No one's death is easy to take, but Fischer was the last person any of us expected to be reading about in the past tense. He was the climber who always came home, who always came through, who not only survived avalanches and white-outs and sudden, 100-mph windstorms, but possessed the strength and will to see that everyone else on his team did, too.

We've seen all the wire stories now, talked to his longtime climbing friends, read and reread the terse letter of regret sent by the U.S. Embassy in Nepal to his wife, Jean, and I still can't help thinking that it's all one big mistake. The fact of his death simply does not square with the facts of his life.

Unwelcome as it must be for climbers everywhere, Fischer's death has been particularly tough on people here in West Seattle, the quiet, blue-collar neighborhood he finally settled in after years of bouncing around the West. We all know his wife and kids, Andy and Katie Rose. As well, we all have a set of shared memories, not simply of Fischer, King of Everest, but Fischer the neighbor, Fischer the barbecue chef, Fischer the colleague and office mate, and, mostly, Fischer the instigator.

Many of the West Seattle crowd were introduced to climbing by Fischer, whose notion of an exquisite weekend was to load of bunch of friends into his 1966 Country Squire station wagon and head for the mountains. He would teach you what you needed to know about knots and harnesses and crampons, about glacier travel and self-arrest, then lead you patiently to the top.

Later, Fischer would treat you as if you and he had just conquered K2--as if you, former flatlander, had graduated and were now capable of appreciating the exhilarating world that exists well above the treeline. "We had a pretty good time, didn't we?" he'd say, smiling broadly, conspiratorially. "Let's do it again."

Although a good many of the West Seattle crowd went on to become solid climbers in their own right, most had other jobs and lives to attend to. But Fischer was the professional, the guy who was out actually climbing K2 or Lhotse while most of us were safe at home.

In the early '70s, Fischer was himself introduced to the mountains and his craft at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Wyoming. He became an instructor , worked throughout North America, and finally started a business--Mountain Madness, a guide service that crisscrossed the globe, trips during which clients often became friends.

He climbed the Fang in the Annapurna group at this time, then organized and led the 1987 Everest North Face expedition. Fischer later became the first American to summit Lhotse. And through the '90s had an incredible string of climbs including Baruntse in '91, K2 in '92, Ama Dablam in '93, Everest in '94, and Broad Peak in '95.

He went everywhere. He did everything, always coming back again loaded with fantastic stories and rolls of wild photographs, both of which would wind up in his legendary slide shows. He seemed to know everyone in the climbing business, yet was always meeting new climbers on the road. His house and office became way stations, stopover points for expeditions headed out or coming back: visiting climbers en route to Denali, friends from his teen-age days in NOLS, a team of Nepalese Sherpas. Among those who showed up at a Fischer salmon bake several years ago were American climber Kitty Calhoun and New Zealanders Rob Hall and Gary Ball. For the rest of us, Fischer provided a window on a way of life we otherwise would not have seen. He was a touchstone, a link between our sedate, suburban, sea-level lives and the adventure we all wished we were living.

We got the news early Saturday morning. Fischer was "missing" somewhere above Camp IV. The weather was bad. Rescue was unlikely. My wife, Karen, who is co-owner of Mountain Madness, was besieged almost immediately by phone calls: Fischer's friends, his relatives, reporters. The press attention was both heartening and discouraging, with some TV crews angling for maximum morbidity, desperate to record a tearful reaction. (One particularly wormy Seattle reporter, brought in, apparently, from the ambulance-chasing beat, began by offering his "sincere condolences," then leapt immediately into such questions as: "Did Fischer ever talk about death?" and "What was the family going to do about the body?")

The news sank in slowly, despite the constant journalistic confirmation. I kept expecting someone to call, to tell us that Fischer had been found, revived, had managed some miraculous comeback, and was ambling through base camp--frostbit, maybe, but grinning madly.

The truth of things didn't hit me until the next day, when we were at his house, talking with his wife and kids. A car pulled up out front and Fischer's mother and father climbed out, blinking, wide-eyed. They were exhausted from the morning's flight from the East Coast. They stood in the gentle rain, looking shell-shocked and utterly lost.

So now we're busy planning a big memorial service in June, and, to judge by the calls and letters pouring into the office, there's going to be a substantial crowd. Family members, old school chums, climbing partners from every period of his life. If there's any consolation, it's precisely the kind of party Fischer would throw himself, with lots of climbing stories, plenty of beer, and a hell of a slide show.

Paul Roberts is a regular correspondent for Outside Online's News & Views section.