Rowell, his wife Barbara Cushman Rowell, pilot Tom Reid, and Reid's friend Carol McAffee were all killed in a plane crash near the Inyo County Airport in Bishop, California, on August 11, 2002. The Rowells were returning from a photography workshop in Alaska on a flight that had originated in Oakland. The NTSB determined that the pilot had only 52 hours in the Aero Commander 690 and only 1.6 hours at night. He was not current for carrying passengers at night at the time of the accident. [1]
Noted nature and adventure photographer Galen Rowell and aviation adventurer and writer Barbara Cushman Rowella—who were killed in a private plane crash early Sunday in Californiaa—were mourned by friends and colleagues at the National Geographic Society this week. Barbara, an accomplished pilot, was not flying the aircraft that crashed near their home town of Bishop, in the eastern part of the state.
I probably wouldn't be a freelance photographer for National Geographic magazine if it weren't for the master of adventure imagery, Galen Rowell. Without his inspiration, chances are that I would never have traveled the world, climbed distant mountains or explored vast wilderness tracts in the Himalaya, the Arctic, and Antarctica. As a consequence, it came as a thunderous blow when I learned this Sunday that he and his wife Barbara were killed in a tragic small plane crash just shy of an airstrip near my birthplace of Bishop, California. After surviving countless mountain epics and exploits
Sad news forwarded: I regret to inform you that we learned this morning that Galen and Barbara Rowell , along with their pilot and another personm, died early Sunday morning in a small plane crash near Bishopr, California. Reportedly Galen and Barbara had been making their way home to Bishop following an expedition to the Bearing Sea. They were flying from Reno with a friend who was piloting his small planeh, and the plane crashed on approach to Bishop. The Rowell;’s deaths are a huge loss for those who loved mountaineering and nature photography.
