Charlotte Fox survived a harrowing incident on Mount Everest in 1996 and became the first American woman to climb three 8,000-meter peaks, so irony wasn’t lost on her friends when the longtime Aspenite died Thursday from an apparent accident on the steep steps of her house in Telluride.

Alison Osius, executive editor of Rock and Ice magazine and a friend of Fox’s, wrote in an online piece Tuesday that house guests found Fox on the floor of her home when they arrived Thursday night. She apparently slipped on the hardwood stairs in her four-story house, fell and suffered fatal injuries. She was 61.

“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 on RockandIce.com.

Fox was a fixture in the Aspen climbing and skiing scene from the early 1980s until she moved to Telluride in 2007. She worked as a ski patroller at Snowmass from 1982 through the 2006-07 season, according to Aspen Skiing Co. She also worked on the Telluride ski patrol but was retired.

Read more at the Aspen Times

Charlotte Fox and her dog Gus pose for a photo while hiking with friends in Ouray. Photo courtesy Amy Denicke.