The search for two Colorado climbers has been narrowed to a remote and rugged province in southwest China, friends said Monday.
Telluride-area residents are collecting money, have helped to hire an interpreter, are organizing a search team and are keeping in touch daily with Chinese officials as they look for Charlie Fowler and Christine Boskoff of Norwood.
“On the ground in Telluride we are doing everything we can,” said Arlene Burns, director of the Mountainfilm festival. “We had meetings all weekend and we’ve had conference calls with many entities in China. They have given us highest priority at the embassy level, and that is music to our ears.”
Five search teams are on the ground in China now. There are also law-enforcement investigations by Chinese authorities – the police and the military. The U.S. Embassy is coordinating the searches.
Fowler and Boskoff, both world-class climbers, had been climbing previously unclimbed peaks in China and were scheduled to catch a flight to Denver on Dec. 4.
Their last communication was from Sichuan province, described by The China Guide as one of the most inaccessible in the country. Fowler e-mailed friends the week of Nov. 20 that the pair might try a few more peaks in their remaining two weeks in China. He did not give an itinerary or name the peaks.
Based on that e-mail, some possible sightings of the pair, and on research Fowler did on his computer in Norwood before the trip, the search has been focused on areas west of the town of Litang.
That area was the site of a robbery of two climbers from New Zealand in late October. The robbers, who threatened the climbers with knives, were not caught.
“We still don’t know if this was a mountaineering accident or foul play,” Burns said.
Fowler, 52, belongs to the Telluride Mountain Club and is known for making hundreds of ascents on previously unclimbed routes around the world.
Boskoff, 39, is one of only a handful of American women to summit six 26,000-foot peaks. She owns the Seattle-based Mountain Madness outdoor adventure company and, like Fowler, owns a home in the southwest Colorado town of Norwood.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
