If you go What: Boulder Sports Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Food, drinks, music, raffle and silent auction. When: 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday Where: Galvanize, 1023 Walnut St., Boulder Cost: $20 Info and tickets: BoulderSportsHallofFame.com * This event is a fundraiser for Jeff Lowe and his medical care.

“He just had a way of seeing things that nobody else would see,” said Malcolm Daly, one of Jeff Lowe’s climbing partners in the 1980s. “That’s the key to his success — his ability to look at a cliff or a mountain, pick out a line and see himself doing it.”

“He wasn’t trying to match what other people were doing,” said Roger Briggs, a free climbing pioneer in the 1970s. “He wanted to go beyond, to do something that had never been done.”

Google Jeff Lowe and you’ll quickly find exhaustive lists of his accomplishments — in rock, ice and alpine climbing, gear and clothing innovation and climbing related business ventures — that had never been done before.

“He fundamentally changed the way we climb,” said Daly.

Before I go on, don’t be fooled by the past tense: Lowe is still around. In fact, this Saturday he will be present for his induction into the Boulder Sports Hall of Fame.

It’s just that his climbing is long gone.

Lowe lives in a wheelchair with a breathing tube in his nose. He can hardly speak. Since 1999 an unknown disease similar to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) has been slowly killing him. Yet today, at 66, he has far outlived doctors’ expectations.

On the website jeffloweclimber.com, Lowe writes, “I am often asked if it doesn’t feel especially unfair to be stricken in this way when my life was so centered on the exact physical and mental abilities that are now so diminished, or completely gone. Although I do miss those things, instead of feeling bitter over the loss, I can’t help but be forever grateful for the gift of fifty fantastic years.”

And Lowe, it seems, took advantage of every single one of those years.

He started climbing at 6, then a year later became the youngest person to climb Wyoming’s Grand Teton.

He soon began pushing standards in all genres of climbing, especially ice and mixed. In 1974 he wowed the climbing world with his ascent of Bridalveil Falls, a 400-foot frozen cascade of vertical ice near Telluride.

“Nobody was climbing that stuff,” said Daly. “Then four years later he soloed it. Not only did he do this thing nobody conceived was doable, he went back and showed people it’s actually easy!”

Lowe has lived in and around the Front Range since the early 1970s. “At the time he was one of the circle here, the brotherhood,” said Briggs. “We didn’t know he was going to grow up to be ‘Jeff Lowe.’ ”

In 1979 he shocked alpinism with his new route on the south face of Ama Dablam (22,349 feet) in Nepal, which he climbed alone

“That’s when he parted ways with the rest of the world,” said Briggs. “He went on to become one of the greatest alpinists of all time.”

If there’s one route that defines Lowe’s absolute commitment to climbing, it’s Metanoia on The Eiger in Switzerland. In the winter of 1991, as Lowe struggled to cope with work and failed relationships, he escaped into his vision of a direct route up its north face, solo and with minimal gear.

Nine days later, after fighting to survive, he emerged on top, transformed.

In a 2011 interview published on thegearcaster.com, Lowe said, “The best climbers are always trying to find out who they are through this pure relationship between the individual and the mountain.”

Metanoia is one of more than 1,000 first ascents to Lowe’s credit, from short routes and big walls to enormous alpine faces. It seems there’s a standout “Lowe Route” at every crag and mountain range in North America and beyond.

“He’s had such an impact on the way that everybody in the world climbs nowadays,” said Daly.

This year, Lowe received international alpinism’s highest honor, the Piolet d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award. It’s only fitting that he also be celebrated here in Boulder.

“After climbing with Jeff I never again said, ‘That’s not possible,’ ” Daly explained. “Jeff just had this way of seeing — or I should say, not seeing — the impossible. That word didn’t exist in his vocabulary.”

And according to friends, family and physicians, it still doesn’t.

Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com