Wallace George Lowe was born in Hastings, New Zealand in 1924. As a young man, he spent his holidays working as an assistant mountaineering guide in the Southern Alps. Here, he befriended famed New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary. Lowe joined Hillary on many mountaineering trips through the 1950s and was part of the team that helped Hillary climb Mt. Everest in 1953. Having a side interest in film and photography, Lowe directed a documentary of the 1953 trip entitled The Conquest of Everest. From 1955 to 1958, he was involved with the Commonwealth Antarctic Exhibition and worked on another documentary: The Crossing of Antarctica. In 1962, Lowe settled in the UK and became a school inspector, retiring in 1984. He died in 2013.