Conrad Anker is not only one of America’s greatest mountaineers but one of the world’s greatest ever. He’s been at the forefront of elite alpinism for decades, his story often interweaving with those of other legendary mountaineers past and present, from George Mallory, Mugs Stump and Alex Lowe, to David Lama and Jimmy Chin. From Antarctica to the Himalayas and Karakorum via Yosemite and Zion, his list of first ascents commands the respect of the mountaineering community.
Anker’s story career in the mountains is a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Having risen to prominence with first ascents in the late ’80s, he became a key member of the North Face’s dream team and went on to forge a powerful friendship with fellow climber Alex Lowe. Tragedy struck in 1999, when Lowe was killed by an avalanche right before Anker’s eyes. In the aftermath, Anker famously fell in love with and married Lowe’s widow Jennifer – their unique bond has forged a relationship that continues strong to this day.
Earlier that same year, Anker had shot to fame for discovering the body of George Mallory on Everest. With his elevated profile, he’s gone on to record a number of impressive and publicized climbs, such as the 2011 ascent of Meru’s Shark’s Fin. An almost fatal heart attack on Lunag Ri in 2016 put and end of Anker’s extreme high-altitude career, but his adventures in the mountains go on unabated, testament to his lust for adventure.
We asked one of our mountaineering experts to reveal the climbs and the events that have shaped Anker into the legendary figure he is today in more detail. It’s a wild ride.
Early life
Anker was born in California, on November 27, 1962. A love of the great outdoors ran deep in his family – his grandfather and father were from Big Oak Flat, just a stone’s throw from Yosemite. He climbed Mount Rainier as a teenager and would go on to meet his mentor, the decorated mountaineer Mugs Stump, at a mountaineering shop while studying in Salt Lake City. He graduated in 1988 with a degree in Recreation and Leisure, a course which he jokingly said he had selected because “the brochure showed mountains in the background”.
With Stump as his mentor, the pair would go on to achieve several impressive first ascents. Anker’s time in the mountains was beginning to gain momentum.
Prior to this mentorship, Stump had attempted to climb the now famous Shark’s Fin on Meru, in the Garhwal Himalayas, in both 1986 and 1988. Clearly these adventures had an impact on the young Anker, as Meru would go on to be a defining project in his later mountaineering career. Stump died in an accident on Denali in 1992.
Meet the expert
Alex Foxfield
Alex is a keen mountaineer and former President of the London Mountaineering Club. He’s happiest in either Scotland’s winter mountains or taking on Alpine 4,000ers on the European continent. He follows the world of elite mountaineering with great interest.
Rock star of the ’90s
With a string of impressive climbs under his belt, including daring, alpine-style first ascents on Alaska’s Gurney Peak in 1987 and Mount Hunter and 1989, Anker joined the North Face’s much-touted dream team, becoming a sponsored climber along with the likes of Alex Lowe and Lynn Hill. It was a fruitful decade, with Anker putting up impressive ascents in places like Zion, Patagonia and Alaska.
A 1997 expedition to Latok II in the Karakorum, alongside Alexander Huber, Thomas Huber and Toni Gutsch, was particularly impressive. Described by the climbers as “El Cap on top of Denali” in their entry to the American Alpine Club journal, the climb saw the team scale a 1,000-meter vertical wall on the peak’s West Face. In the same year, Anker also achieved first ascents on El Cap and in Antarctica, a place he’d return to time and time again. The flame of exploration has always burned strong.
Discovering Mallory
A startling discovery in 1999 would put Anker’s name on news broadcasts around the globe. He was part of an Everest expedition with the stated aim of finding the body of George Mallory, the central figure in one of mountaineering’s most enduring mysteries. In 1924, Mallory and climbing partner Sandy Irvine were seen heading towards the unclimbed summit of the world’s highest mountain when cloud rolled in, obscuring them from view. The pair were never seen again and whether or not they made it to the summit has been the subject of debate ever since.
On June 13, having followed his own intuition, taking him away from the rest of the expedition, Anker discovered Mallory’s body. The news spread like wildfire and Anker was propelled to much wider fame than he’d previously experienced.
He returned to Everest in 2007 and climbed the peak via the North Col alongside British climber Leo Houlding… and a film crew. They were reenacting Mallory and Irvine’s climb for the 2010 feature film The Wildest Dream, dressed in the clothes and wearing the kind of boots the British pair would have worn in the 1920s. Anker underlined his mastery by free-climbing the notorious Second Step, a rock face at 28,300 feet that’s usually climbed via a fixed ladder. It’s thought to be the highest free climb in history.
On the subject of whether Mallory and Irvine could have summited Everest back in 1924, Anker is of the opinion that “it’s possible, but highly improbable”. In a strange twist of fate, it was Anker’s climbing partner on Meru, Jimmy Chin, who’d discover the remains of Mallory’s partner Sandy Irvine in October 2024.
Partnership with Alex Lowe
In the 1990s, Alex Lowe was considered by many as the finest alpinist in the world. He and Anker formed a formidable partnership in the mountains and became best friends.
Lowe and Anker were together for the fateful 1999 Shishapangma American Ski Expedition. While below the mountain’s gigantic south face, a serac broke free, triggering a devastating avalanche. Lowe and fellow climber David Bridges were swept away and buried in the snow. Anker, lucky not to have experienced the avalanche’s full force having fled in the opposite direction, was knocked 70 feet down the mountain, suffering broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a lacerated head.
United in their grief, Anker and Lowe’s widow Jennifer would go on to find an unexpected love. At the time, Anker had been engaged to climber and lawyer Becky Hall, though the intense bond he now felt with Jennifer won out and they were married in 2001. The relationship, questioned by some at the time, has proven strong and Anker went on to adopt Lowe’s three sons, Max, Sam and Issac.
Lowe once summed Anker up in a way that perhaps only a best friend could, saying: “Being in the mountains, for Conrad, is as natural and essential as breathing… It’s where his heart beats, where his soul abides.” Lowe and Bridge’s bodies were discovered by the late Swiss mountaineering legend Ueli Steck and climbing partner David Göttler in April 2016.
Adventures in Antarctica and the Himalayas
Krakauer and Anker, alongside several others, teamed up once again in 2001. Their goal – to scale the unclimbed east face of the highest point on Antarctica, the Vinson Massif. The otherworldliness of their chosen objective was described by Krakauer as “like going to the moon”. After skiing 70 kilometers to reach the 1,000-meter headwall, they overcame what must be the coldest big wall on the planet.
In 2005, he climbed the Southwest Ridge of Cholatse in Nepal’s Khumbu region alongside a North Face team consisting of Kevin Thaw, Kris Erickson, John Griber and Abby Watkins. The mountain was likened by the great Ueli Steck as “the Eiger of Nepal” and is a challenge only for the most committed alpinists.
One of his most well-known climbs was his 2011 ascent of Meru’s Shark’s Fin in the Garhwal Himalayas alongside Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk. Their success was documented in the acclaimed 2015 film Meru, Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s precursor to the immensely successful Free Solo and, incidentally, one of our favorite climbing films here at Advnture.
The Shark’s Fin route had been touted as one of the few remaining big wall challenges left in the Himalayas and many elite teams had tried and failed to conquer it. Anker attempted the route in 2003 alongside Doug Chabot and Bruce Miller, and then again with Ozturk and Chin in 2008, retreating just two pitches short of the summit due to severe weather.
The trio returned to the mountain three years later, though in less-than-ideal circumstances. Ozturk was in recovery after a skiing accident had left him with skull and spine injuries; while Chin had almost died in an avalanche while skiing just a few days later. It seemed as though Ozturk’s condition would come back to bite them, when he suffered a mini stroke while high on the wall. However, the three overcame these difficulties to complete the climb.
Lunag Ri and beyond
In November 2015, Lunag Ri, a remote, 6,907-meter mountain in the Rolwaling Himal on the border between Nepal and Tibet, was one of the world’s great unclimbed peaks. Alongside the late David Lama, Anker was aiming to change all of that. The unlikely pair – Anker a seasoned American veteran at 56 and Lama a prodigious young Austrian at 28 – came to within 300 meters of the summit, high on the West Ridge, before being forced to retreat. Anker, clearly in awe of the task at hand, said: “That was a bigger, harder mountain than we are.”
Fast forward twelve months and the pair were back on the mountain, bidding to improve on their previous effort. However, it was not to be. Anker suffered an altitude-induced heart attack while climbing the Southwest Face, forcing Lama to rig a rappel and get him back to advanced basecamp and call in a rescue. A helicopter airlifted Anker to Kathmandu, where he received the required medical attention.
Lama would return to Lunag Ri in 2018, teetering along its deliciously narrow summit ridge to climb the airy summit. He won a Piolet d’Or for his troubles, a fitting tribute to his three attempts to scale one of the last great unclimbed peaks. However, he tragically died in an avalanche on Howse Peak in the Canadian Rockies alongside fellow Piolet winner Hansjorg Auer. Both were given the award posthumously, which caused consternation among some in the mountaineering community who questioned whether the prize was partly responsible for motivating risk taking in the mountains.
For Anker, the events on Lunag Ri forced a retirement from high-altitude mountaineering. That’s not to say his adventures were done. In 2017, he led North Face team members – including Jimmy Chin and Alex Honnold – on an expedition to Wolf’s Jaw massif in Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land. Alongside Chin, he put up a new line on the staggeringly beautiful Ulvetanna.
