The Affirming Force Of Scott Fischer

Times copy editor Dave Bowman met renowned mountaineer Scott Fischer, co-founder of Mountain Madness in Seattle, in December at an indoor climbing party at The Vertical Club in Fremont. Fischer, 40, died descending Mount Everest over the weekend. Here, Bowman recalls his brief acquaintance with the man known throughout the alpine community as "Mr. Rescue."

The tan, muscled arms were below me, below the funky wall and the little outcroppings, and they were there just in case. Earlier they had ascended the wall in one fluid act of agility. Behind the arms was the force of a personality I had never encountered before: dynamic and selfless and utterly confident. It had conquered Everest and K-2 and other mighty peaks, and, if allowed to, could probably just as easily turn around and trek straight through to the center of the Earth.

The force of Scott Fischer.

I was near the ceiling now, arms and legs splayed, mind scrambling, and I could feel the fear welling up, spreading out across the weirdly colored studded wall. It was the fear of a neophyte, somebody totally unfamiliar with rock climbing, with belaying and rappelling and the crack of a pick. Yet nudging the fear was the realization I was safe: safe because of the grinning blond fellow below me. I was harnessed and belted, a spider on a rope, yet even if I were free and unstrung and suddenly frozen by that fear, alone and vulnerable high along that wall, I knew that Scott Fischer would be there.

And now, six months after he lowered me from the heights, after we shared drinks on the gravel beside the incline, after we talked about the fears that plague people everywhere and the attitudes needed to vanquish them, Scott is at one with his element. I knew he was going to tackle Everest again, but it never occurred to me that he wouldn't make it back. When the call came, from a good friend with whom I'd tracked Scott's expedition on the Internet, it sounded like a slow-motion nightmare: Scott . . . didn't . . . make . . . it.

He died doing what he loved, something that was both vocation and avocation. And, typically, he died assisting someone else. Now his spirit continues to climb, untethered, on mountains unseen. His essence speaks from the Himalayan snows - and from Fuji and Rainier and Kilimanjaro. The Sherpa ghosts have welcomed him. I am lucky and privileged to have met Scott Fischer, to have scaled a sheer face under his mischievous eye. I want to celebrate him. I want people to know how affirming he was. I want to carry his positivity forever, a liberating weight on my earthbound shoulders.