If you go
› What: Meet Max Lowe, National Geographic Adventurer.› When: 5-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 22 (includes screening of “National Parks Adventure”).› Where: Tennessee Aquarium’s Imax Theater, 201 Chestnut St.› Admission: $22 Aquarium members, $26 nonmembers (includes film, appetizers, cash bar and after-party admission at High Point Climbing).› Phone: 1-800-262-0695.› Website: community.tnaqua.org/events/spring-2016/meet-max-lowe-national-geographic-adventurer.
Learn more about Max Lowe
Read a Q&A with National Geographic adventure photographer and storyteller Max Lowe.
Max Lowe’s body is so packed with adventurous DNA, it’s surprising the strands aren’t rappelling down his torso.
Lowe is the son of vaunted mountaineer Alex Lowe, who died in 1999 after being caught in an avalanche during an expedition in Tibet. Following his father’s death, Lowe was raised by his stepfather, Conrad Anker, a multiple Everest ascent veteran and leader of The North Face climbing team.
Max was just a preteen when he embarked on what he describes as “my first big adventure,” an ascent with his father to the 13,700-foot peak of Grand Teton in Teton National Park, where the family lived for several summers while his father worked as a climbing guide.
“[That] is one of those [memories] that inspired my curiosity to chase the wild corners of the world,” Lowe writes in an emailed response while enjoying downtime in Bocas Del Toro, a cluster of islands near the border between Panama and Costa Rica.
After a childhood spent learning to love and honor the wild, Lowe dedicated his life to photography and storytelling. His quest to slake his adventurous thirst has taken him around the world, from Nepalese village markets and pristine Brazilian beaches to the frigid shores of Antarctica.
It comes as little surprise then that the 27-year-old National Geographic Young Explorers grantee has a passion for the wilderness and a deep respect for the role the National Parks Service plays in preserving them for Americans.
“Some people who are lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the national parks hold great value in them and then work hard to protect them,” he says. “I think some of my fondest memories in the parks are definitely my younger years spent rattling around the mountains, lakes and rivers of Teton National Park when we lived there.”
During a presentation Tuesday, March 22, at the Tennessee Aquarium’s Imax Theater, Lowe will speak about his passion for national parks and his featured role in the recently released 3-D Imax documentary “National Parks Adventure.”
Lowe stars in the Robert Redford-narrated film alongside his stepfather and longtime friend Rachel Pohl. For 43 minutes, the documentary showcases the grandeur and majesty of “these pristine places America’s wild,” from Yosemite and Yellowstone to the Florida Everglades.
Having navigated ice caves, scaled vertiginous rock faces and hiked through temple-like forest groves for the film, Lowe says he hopes his trip to Chattanooga will help inspire more people to join the ranks of Americans who value the great outdoors and feel a shared responsibility to protect them.
“It has been so cool, sharing our adventure stories with people who have no tie within the world in which we exist. It’s really cool,” he writes. “I really hope that the film inspires people to visit all the parks, but more so just to get outside and find the value in nature, because it’s one of the most valuable things we have as Americans – these amazing, protected, wild places.”
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.
See the documentary
› “National Parks Adventure 3D” shows at the Tennessee Aquarium’s Imax Theater, 201 Chestnut St., at noon, 2, 4 and 6 p.m. daily. Tickets are $12 adults, $10 children.› Members of the Imax Club pay $40 for unlimited documentary film visits for a year, discounted feature-film tickets and guest tickets, free upgrades to concessions and discounts at the Imax store.
Did you know?
1. The National Parks Service celebrates its 100th anniversary on Aug. 25.2. There are 407 national parks sites, including monuments, seashores, lakeshores, recreation areas and historic sites.3. In all, the national parks system protects 84 million acres, roughly the size of Germany.3. More than 22,000 people are employed by the National Parks Service. The service also has more than 220,000 volunteers.4. The U.S. Cavalry were the stewards of the national parks for 32 years.5. Naturalist John Muir’s three-day camping trip into Yosemite with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 so thoroughly convinced the president of the need to protect America’s wilderness that he created five new national parks and 18 national monuments.6. The first national park, Yellowstone, became protected wilderness through an act signed on March 1, 1872, by President Ulysses S. Grant.7. America’s largest national park, Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska, covers more than 13.2 million acres, enough area to contain all of Switzerland or Costa Rica. The park includes nine of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. and an active volcano.8. The country’s smallest national park, Philadelphia’s Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial, is the home of a Polish freedom fighter who was instrumental in the American Revolution. It covers .02 acre.9. The highest point in North America (Mount McKinley) and the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere (Death Valley) are both found in national parks.10. Thirty-five national parks are named after U.S. Presidents. The most honored presidents are Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.