page_title: Mountain Madness
section_title: The Boskoffs
hierarchical_section_title: Mountain Madness / History / The Boskoffs
caption_attribution_description: English: Mount Baker, Whatcom County, Washington as seen from Boulder Creek SE of the mountain
context_page_description: Mountain Madness is a Seattle-based mountaineering and trekking company. The company specializes in mountain adventure travel and has a training school for mountain and rock climbing.
context_section_description: In 1997, the year after Scott Fischer's death, the Boskoffs purchased Mountain Madness. Christine  and Keith Boskoff had met each other at a climbing gym and after a time, got married. Christine was an aeronautical engineer and Keith an architect, but climbing became a bigger part of their lives, and Christine soon left her job to climb full-time with Keith. They purchased Mountain Madness in 1997, and under their guidance it found increasing success. Christine climbed six of the world’s fourteen 8000 meter peaks, a feat unequalled by any other American woman at the time. 
  In 1999 Keith died, leaving his widow Christine to run Mountain Madness on her own. She led expeditions for about three months that year and planned to ring in the year 2000 on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, with a group of climbing clients. Other famous losses in the climbing community during this period, besides Scott and the Everest losses, were Alison Hargreaves in 1995 and Alex Lowe in 1999.
  With a renewed commitment to teaching important mountaineering skills, Mountain Madness broadened its adventure travel offerings to include a new genre of trips: "adventure treks" that include both trekking and climbing options. The company earned an accreditation by the American Mountain Guides Association as a commitment to "high technical standards, strong programs, and a quality staff of engaged and engaging climbing instructors and guides."
  Like her predecessor, Boskoff was committed to social issues. She served on the board of Room to Read, an international organization dedicated to improving education in developing countries,  
  and through Mountain Madness, she led a fund-raising climb of Mount Baker, the third highest mountain in Washington state (10,781 feet / 3,286 m), to benefit the organization's long-term goal of helping 10 million children. Boskoff worked with the Central Asia Institute as well, an organization in Bozeman, Montana that promotes and supports community-based education, primarily in Pakistan and Afghanistan, by building schools, training teachers, and funding scholarships.
  Nine years into her tenure as the owner and leader of Mountain Madness, in the fall of 2006, Boskoff and Charlie Fowler, another well-known American climber and Mountain Madness guide, died in an avalanche while climbing near Lenggu Monastery on Genyen Mountain, in Sichuan Province in southwest China.
caption: Mount Baker; Christine led a charity climb on this Mountain to fund-raise for children
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