Seattle Climber Did Everything Right, Mountain Still Won

Sooner or later, the mountain always wins.

This is the unwritten rule of Himalayan mountaineering, and it struck Seattle's climbing community with unprecedented finality last weekend.

Nearly a week has passed since a storm trapped dozens of climbers on Mount Everest, killing eight, including Seattle's Scott Fischer and Renton's Douglas Hansen. Seven days do little to ease the pain.

Any mountaineering death is tragic. But in a climbing community as cohesive as Seattle's, Fischer's loss is a gut punch.

More than any modern climber, he put a face on Seattle mountaineering. A distinctive one, at that. Scott Fischer was bigger than life. It's a cliche to say so. It also happens to be true.

He was physically imposing and emotionally gifted. Fischer was strong as a bull, spirited as a tornado - the physical embodiment of the Northwest's out-on-the-edge persona. He was a person you met and did not forget. To the children at West Seattle Montessori, where his own young son and daughter go to school, Fischer was a hero.

Journalists are not supposed to have them, but I guess he was sort of a hero to me, too. In my mind, Fischer was, and will continue to be, the picture of vigor - quite literally. In writing about intangible qualities, it often helps to put a human face on the attributes you're trying to describe. Since the day I first encountered Fischer, whenever I tried to write about unflagging strength and flat-out fearlessness, Scott Fischer's mountain-sculpted face always popped into my mind's eye. After his death, it remains there, strong as ever.

I see the face - beaming - in a series of snapshots from some of the world's most magnificent alpine places. There is Fischer, the first American to make the last steps up Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest peak, in 1989. There he is again in 1992, saving two lives and making a courageous summit dash to the top of K2, the most fearsome peak in the world, with climbing buddy Ed Viesturs of Seattle. And there he is again last week at Everest base camp, in that now-haunting, computer-generated video image, telling the world about his philosophy on life only days before it ended.

Mountaineers would be lying if they said they never thought about death. Fischer was used to the question. I recall asking it myself more than once. He answered it with his usual patience.

Sure, he thought about it, he said. Mostly because he feared leaving on an expedition and never returning to his wife and two children. But it was not something to dwell on.

Fischer often said he climbed as a young man for the adrenaline rush, "just to get scared." Later, after he became a father, he said, "I climbed not to get scared." Fewer risks. Smarter decisions.

That's why losing him rips at the soul. Fischer was a savvy, mature climber doing everything right. The South Col route he was descending was the safest - if there is such a thing - route on the mountain. He was well equipped. In top shape. Following every rule. Still, the mountain got him.

The rule is brutal and consistent. Eventually, the mountain wins. No amount of preparation, no degree of strength, no streak of luck can change that equation. Every time you're there, you're playing the odds.

Climbers don't call the climes above 26,000 feet the "Death Zone" just because it sounds daunting. Human beings were not designed to exist in thin air. Stay in it long enough, and high altitude all by itself eventually kills you. Extreme weather is the second punch in a deadly Death Zone combination.

Successful Himalayan climbers are those who retire early. The sky-high peaks, they say, occasionally accommodate a scamper to the top. But bagging a peak is hardly a victory. It is climbing's equivalent of a draw. The mountain is never beaten. Ever.

Earlier this week, a member of Fischer's expedition reached his body and left it not far away, in a quiet place, high on Everest. In a small mountainside ceremony, his climbing party committed his soul to the Himalayas.

From the day he first set foot there, Everest's top-of-the-world summit always remained part of Fischer. Fittingly, from this day forward, Fischer will always remain part of Everest.

Eventually, the mountain always wins.

But few climbers pushed it to a draw with the consistency, the panache or the courage of Scott Fischer.

They belong together.