thousand and an altitude of only 790 feet, Appleton, Wisconsin, situated on the Fox River, is about as far away from Sichuan, in southwestern China, as one can travel. The nearest significant mountains are the Rockies, a thousand miles and several tanks of gas to the west. The paper industry, including Kimberly-Clark (the personal care company that produces big-name brands Kleenex and Huggies), provides thousands of jobs in the community.
Aside from the river, perhaps the most noteworthy natural feature in the community is High Cliff State Park. Ten miles from Appleton, High Cliff sits on the shores of Lake Winnebago, a vast body of water in the middle of northeastern Wisconsin. Dotted with limestone cliffs perfect for bouldering, the park became Chris’s destination of choice on trips home to visit her family. Strapping on a heavy backpack to add to the demand on her body, she’d run the ten miles there and back, training for summits of 8,000-meter peaks on the other side of the world.
Proximity to Canada gives Wisconsin natives a distinctive accent. Nasal, sharply articulated phrases are a novelty to those outside the Midwest. Drinking fountains are “bubblers.” Stoplights are “stop-andgo-lights.” Deep-fried cheese curds are as common as french fries and are paired with Friday night fish fries and bottles of locally brewed beer. Chris’s Wisconsin accent never left her, a tribute to the fact that she’d lived in Appleton all seventeen of her formative years. Long after she’d moved away, her love for Wisconsin Danish kringle and the Green Bay Packers remained, as did her strikingly friendly disposition that caused her to drum up conversations on all manner of trails and rocks. Engaging others in pleasant chatter marked Chris as a Midwest girl, while Wisconsin’s frigid winter months left their mark for future climbs by preparing her to endure subzero temperatures.
Winters give Appleton and Wisconsin a bad rap, say locals. Yes, the temperature can cause massive, temporary migrations to Mexico. The salt dumped on roads to melt ice eventually makes them appear to be made of white concrete. But April through November are a delight. The town is full of blooming flower beds, and kids zoom all over on bikes, eventually stopping at one of many ice cream parlors. Why would anyone ever leave?
Downtown Appleton in the late 1970s and early 1980s—Chris’s childhood years—boasted Conkey’s Bookstore, a cocktail lounge called Cleo’s, and the brand-new Paper Valley hotel, named in honor of the community’s leading industry. It was a place of relative quiet. A city filled with Lawrence University professors and engineers living next to line workers and truck drivers. Sunday mornings, Chris and her family attended Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
Chris was the youngest of four children, and the only girl. Her mom, Joyce, had given birth to Chris at age thirty-nine and watched her daughter battle for position in the weekend flag football games on their lawn. Joyce recalled: “Her brothers would get her out there playing with all the boys and Tommy would yell at her, ‘Just get in there and push those boys aside, Chrissy!’ She wasn’t big, but she’d run for a touchdown as she scrambled right around them. They made her tough.”
NOW NINETY-TWO, JOYCE EXUDED THE energy of a best friend more than a grandmother. With a laugh that carried from one room to the other, conversation and stories came easily in her presence. Her build was somehow sturdy yet delicate, perhaps because of her height—no more than five feet. She joked: “I used to be five-two but then I shrank.” Taking herself too seriously would be tragic, draining the pleasure out of simple things left to enjoy, such as her great-grandchildren and the book club at her retirement home in Appleton.
Reminiscing about her daughter, Joyce referenced a childhood friend of Chris’s. “Nadine is the one to talk to! She knew Chrissy well. Oh my, did those girls get into some antics when they were teenagers!” Waving her hand in front of her face, she broke into a huge grin, the stories of her teenage daughter trickling between the edges of her memory.
NADINE GREW UP TO BECOME a landscape designer, but back in the day she was simply Chris’s best friend. Both girls came from families of boys, and they became thick as thieves in seventh grade when they met at Madison Junior High School. “We were total tomboys,” Nadine recalled. “We signed up for the basketball team and both of us sucked, so we sat on the bench together. We weren’t tall, and neither of us were good shooters, but we had fun.”
Eventually the girls were so attached that they rode double on Nadine’s banana bike. Sunny weekends were filled with lying on blankets in the driveway, slathered with baby oil. When Chris’s brother Paul was out on dates, the two girls shut themselves in his room and listened to his records, playing Chris’s favorite album, Rush 2112.
“Basically, we were just a couple of girls messing around and getting into trouble,” Nadine said. “We figured it would keep us from getting into trouble later. Whenever Chris got in hot water, I’d knock on her bedroom window and give her a Tab.”
By the time they hit high school at Appleton East, the girls had expanded their list of activities. Chris joined the tennis and softball teams, took up playing flute in the marching band, and sported a classic eighties short haircut that was so uneven on the sides that she earned the nickname “Little Spike.” Hanging out with Nadine’s family gave Chris the chance to experience opportunities she wasn’t getting at home. Her family took the occasional trip up to remote northern Wisconsin, but many of Chris’s big adventures were with Nadine and her parents, who were still in their thirties.
In the winter of 1983, the girls were at Nordic Mountain in central Wisconsin. “I can’t believe you’re in tenth grade and you’ve never been downhill skiing before,” Nadine said to Chris. She looked at her friend, who was gazing up at the mountain. Although it was a foothill compared to what Chris would be on in a decade, the mountain was the first to irresistibly entice her.
“I don’t need the bunny hill,” Chris said. “I wanna go with you. I can handle it.”
Nadine wasn’t so sure. “I’ve been on skis since I was four years old. That’s probably not the best place to start, way up there.” But she lost the argument and the pair took the lift up, scooching off at the top and inching closer to the mountain’s smooth, downhill slope.
“Just give me a little push! I’ll be fine,” Chris said as she positioned her skis parallel as instructed.
Watching Chris begin her first descent, Nadine’s tummy knotted. Wind blew against her neon down jacket as she took off behind her friend. Gaining speed, she picked the fastest line to catch up to Chris, who appeared to be disobeying Nadine’s five-minute lesson on how to slow down or stop. “I couldn’t catch her,” Nadine recalled. “She went straight down, and I found her at the bottom, just sitting on the snow, smiling.”
Joyce and her husband, Robin, saw to it that their children went through confirmation and were properly educated. The loving parents told their kids repeatedly that they could pursue whatever they wanted. All four were sent off to college with strong Midwestern values and the drive to squeeze as much as they could out of life. Joyce pressed particularly hard for Chris to go to college “since Mama didn’t get to go.” The decision to stay home and raise four children had fit with the times, yet Joyce was adventurous by nature. In the 1950s, she trained to be a beautician and worked for a spell at a local department store, but ultimately she felt her calling was at home with her three sons and Chris.
For a time, it looked like the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh would become Chris’s home for the next four years. Robin had a fierce work ethic, which his daughter emulated, resulting in high school grades that would allow her the freedom to be selective with her education and career choices. A career in nursing sounded promising and would be a choice her parents could understand. But Chris changed her mind at the last minute. Instead of pursuing a nursing degree at Oshkosh, she decided on engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, an hour farther from Appleton than Oshkosh. A daughter going to school in engineering seemed an ocean apart from anything
