A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 24

This is the eighth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Katie Rose on Top of the World.

Twenty years after her father, Seattle climbing legend Scott Fischer, died on Everest, Katie Rose Fischer-Price traveled back to the land that claimed him — and found herself in the midst of an even greater catastrophe.

If you know the name Scott Fischer — and you’re not a climber yourself — it’s likely thanks to the unprecedented media attention of (and the public’s ongoing fascination with) the 1996 Everest disaster. Even before tragedy struck, ’96 was set to be one of the most documented climbing seasons ever on the mountain. An IMAX film crew, following another Seattle climbing legend, Ed Viesturs, was on location. So was then Seattle-based author Jon Krakauer, on assignment for Outside magazine. (Krakauer would turn the resulting article into the best-selling book Into Thin Air.)

Some 50 climbers were on Everest on May 10, 1996. (Yet another Seattleite, postal worker Doug Hansen, was on his second summit attempt.) Fischer was there with Mountain Madness, his West Seattle–based mountaineering company, to lead eight clients to the top, including accomplished mountaineer and Manhattan socialite Sandy Hill (then Sandy Hill Pittman).

Fischer had summited Everest in 1994 without supplemental oxygen — an incredibly challenging and potentially deadly prospect at altitudes higher than 26,000 feet — as part of the first-ever Everest cleanup crew (a crew responsible for the removal of 5,000 pounds of climber trash). In the decades before, he tagged the Matterhorn, Aconcagua, and a host of impressive mountains throughout the Himalayas, including K2 and the first-ever successful American ascent of Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak. Before the age of 40, he had stood atop the tallest peaks on six of seven continents (only Antarctica’s Vinson Massif eluded him).

During that time he turned his passion for climbing into a livelihood with Mountain Madness, guiding people to the highest points on earth. But it wasn’t what Fischer climbed that earned him acclaim in the mountaineering world, it was how he climbed. “There is no one that was more fun to be with in the mountains than Scott,” says Brent Bishop, a Seattle climber and part of Fischer’s team on his successful ’94 Everest bid. Fischer assailed mountains, as Bishop notes, “in good style,” finding joy in the delicate high-altitude dance and performing each of his personal expeditions without oxygen as a way to fully embrace the challenge.

Mountaineering was a chance to test the human body and mind for the introspective yet quick-smiling blond, but also an excuse to meet new people and see new places. Much of his legacy, in fact, was built on the lasting relationships with the cultures that thrived in the high alpine.

He married Jeannie Price, a soon-to-be Alaska Airlines pilot and his former National Outdoor Leadership School student, on Valentine’s Day, 1981. After settling in Seattle, the couple had two children, Andy and, four years later, Katie Rose. Scott had summited some of the gnarliest peaks in the world, but quickly found one of his biggest challenges under his own West Seattle roof. Katie developed an obstinate streak in her early years, much to the bemusement of Scott and the rest of the Fischer clan. “He began to call her K2,” remembers Jeannie. “The most formidable climb he ever did, and the most intransigent child he could imagine.”

Fischer and his guides, Neal Beidleman and Anatoli Boukreev, successfully brought six of their eight clients to the summit on May 10, 1996, but during the descent they were caught high in the Death Zone (the terrain above 26,000 feet) by a massive blizzard. While his guides and clients eventually descended safely, Fischer, who had become increasingly ill while shuttling climbers to and from camp, was unable to make it below the Balcony at 27,395 feet, eventually succumbing to hypothermia and becoming one of eight to perish in the deadliest 24 hours on Everest up to that point. Fischer’s good friend and business rival, New Zealand team leader Rob Hall, also died in the storm, marking the first time that two party leaders died in a single event on Everest. Both men’s bodies remain on the mountain to this day.

The death of a loved one is always a challenge for those left behind. But what if the person who died did so pursuing something bigger and more meaningful — to them — than their family members?

If your father died mountaineering knowing he could very well leave behind a wife and young child… how would that impact the child as she grew up? What message would she take from her father’s choice?

Thus a trek to a remote part of the world, a quixotic journey seeking closure.

Then a twist: A massive earthquake. Now it’s the daughter’s turn to survive. And perhaps in that experience, she comes to understand something of her father’s mindset, allowing her to accept him for who he was.

There you go: My twenty fourth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

For other posts in my A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017) series, go here.