One of his most famous climbs was on the 5,000-foot face of a peak in the Himalayas called Kwangde, 21,000 feet above sea level. In 1982, Lowe and famed filmmaker/mountaineer David Breashears spent four days climbing the face, which was covered with waterfall ice and had an average slope of 80 degrees. Their Kwangde summit is considered one of the greatest climbs in history.

In 1974, Lowe and his pal Mike Weiss climbed frozen Bridalveil Falls in Colorado, a 400-foot tower of solid ice. Four years later Lowe cemented his legend by making a solo ascent of Bridalveil.

Until the MS came on at age 50, Lowe was still climbing with teenagers. In 1999, two years before the onset of the most dramatic symptoms, he told Sports Illustrated, "A basketball player from 20 years ago is not still performing at the same level. I am."

But his body finally betrayed him, and his climbing days are finished.

"It's poetic injustice," he says. "I say that tongue in cheek. I'm not saying 'Why me?' I'm saying, 'Why not me?' A lot of people have worse disabilities than I do."

Force in climbing industry

Lowe, now 56, is little known in the general population. Almost no one in Utah — where he was born and raised — has heard of him. But, as Sports Illustrated's Kerry Murray wrote nine years ago, Lowe "has retained an almost mythic status among ice climbers."

Even when not climbing, Lowe has been involved in nearly every aspect of the sport for some four decades. He has made two instructional videos and written three books (he plans to release a fourth book — "Many Climbs" — later this year). He and his brothers, Greg and Mike, who are also accomplished climbers, have been an industry force in creating and marketing climbing equipment and clothing.

They started their own companies — Lowe Alpine, Lowepro, and Latok — and served as consultants for others. They created, among other things, spring-loaded cam nuts (which hold the rope), a new type of step-in crampon, and nearly every item of clothing used for climbing. Greg invented the first modern internal frame backpack in his garage in 1967, and a few years later created plastic buckles and compression straps that are now an industry standard, as well as the soft, foam-padded camera bags that are now so popular.

Jeff, who along with Greg is included on any list of most influential American climbers, has been around every stage of the climbing revolution and had some hand in its development — wall climbing, rock climbing, alpine ice climbing, frozen waterfall climbing, mixed rock and ice climbing.

He organized the first World Cup climbing competition in the United States in 1988. He designed the 12-story climbing wall on the west face of Snowbird Lodge, which has been used to host America's National Sport Climbing Championships. He started and organized the annual Arctic Wolf Ouray Ice Festival, which has become a top ice-climbing rendezvous.