A woman who survived a harrowing incident on Mount Everest in 1996 and became the first American woman to climb three 8,000-meter peaks died last week after apparently falling on the stairs of her Colorado home.

Charlotte Fox, 61, was found on the night of May 24 by guests arriving at her home in the mountain town of Telluride, according to an online article by Alison Osius, executive editor of Rock and Ice magazine and a friend of Fox’s.

Fox had apparently slipped on the hardwood stairs in her four-story house, fell and suffered fatal injuries. San Miguel County Coroner Emil Sante said Tuesday he is waiting for results of a toxicology report and hasn’t yet released the cause and manner of death. “We have no reason to believe that it was suspicious at all,” he said.

“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 the Snowmass ski resort from 1982 through the 2006-07 season, according to Aspen Skiing Co. She also worked on the Telluride ski patrol but was retired.

Fox will forever have a place in climbing lore as a member of a party that ran into disaster on Mount Everest in May 1996. She and then-boyfriend Tim Madsen reached the summit in an expedition being guided by Scott Fischer, but a number of calamities affected the group’s descent. They were eventually part of an exhausted group that huddled in a blizzard, desperate to find their camp.

Everybody’s oxygen had run out and the wind chill exceeded 100 degrees below zero, according to Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book about the incident, “Into Thin Air.”

“The cold was so painful, I didn’t think I could endure it anymore,” Fox said in the book. “I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly.”

Madsen looked after Fox and three other incapacitated climbers as guides went to summon help.

Eight climbers died on the mountain that day.

Fox went on to accomplish several climbing feats, usually hiring guides to tackle the highest peaks. Osius wrote that Fox made her final Seven Summits ascent of Mount Elbrus in 2014.

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Bill Gates Sr., father of Microsoft co-founder, dies at 94 Her bio on EverestHistory.com said she climbed Cho Oyu and was the first American woman to reach the summit of Gasherbrum II. In South America she climbed Aconcagua, Hauscaran and Chopicalqui, along with several 18,000-foot peaks throughout Peru, her bio said. “She has climbed Mt. Vinson in Antarctica, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, and made many alpine ice routes in the Canadian Rockies. In America she has climbed the West Rib on Denali, Mt. Rainer and all of Colorado’s 14ers.”

Fox was married to Reese Martin, who was killed in 2004 in an accident during a paragliding competition in Washington.