Mountain climber Charlotte Fox died from an apparent fall at her home last week, a tragic end for a woman who survived the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest that became the subject of the book "Into Thin Air."
Fox, 61, apparently fell from the top of her stairs at her home in Telluride, Colorado, on May 24, The Washington Post reported.
Friends who were staying with Fox for the "Mountainfilm" festival discovered her, according to the Telluride Daily Planet. Foul play is not suspected.
"I think her death was terribly tragic," her friend Kim Reynolds told the newspaper. "Finding her body was a very shocking and difficult thing."
Reynolds described Fox as "very driven and determined to go high" — she climbed more 8,000-meter mountains than any other American woman — "but she was also very warm and generous and caring and engaged with her friends."
Fox texted to confirm plans to climb the coming weekend, her friend Alison Osius wrote in a tribute for Rock and Ice magazine.
"Charlotte had survived so much up high, it was stunning and profoundly sad that she died that evening of May 24 in a household accident," Osius wrote.
A native of North Caroline, Fox moved to Colorado in the early 1980s, working as a ski patroller and living in Aspen before moving to Telluride in 2007, according to The Aspen Times.
In May 1996, Fox was among a group of climbers who became stranded during a blizzard on Mount Everest that took the lives of eight climbers.
"The cold was so painful, I didn't think I could endure it anymore," Fox said in the bestselling book "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer. "I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly."
Twitter users were struck by the news of Fox's death.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.