Women in mountaineering did not follow along behind a male history: they made routes, styles and schools of their own. They climbed the highest summits in heavy wool and leather boots, led expeditions, climbed eight-thousanders without supplementary oxygen, made the first free ascents of big walls and showed that the word “mountaineer” needs no qualifier for sex.
This is not a popularity contest. We weigh how new the route was, the style, how well the result is corroborated, the mark left on the next generation and the conditions of the period. The order is roughly chronological. The wider historical context is in the encyclopaedia “50 Great Mountaineers from Around the World”.
The first women climbers, before the Himalayan era
In the nineteenth century women had more than the terrain to overcome. Society held that long journeys, trousers, life in camp and physical risk were unsuitable for a woman. Early women climbers often wrote for print under pressure from critics, and had to establish their right to be in the mountains before they could argue about sporting style.
Lucy Walker and Meta Brevoort
In 1871 the Briton Lucy Walker became the first woman on the Matterhorn. Her contemporary Meta Brevoort made hard alpine ascents, was the first woman on the Weisshorn and tried to reach the Matterhorn ahead of Walker. Their rivalry is often retold as a society story, but something else matters more: both worked in an age of long skirts, heavy clothing, rudimentary belays and almost no sporting infrastructure for women at all.
Fanny Bullock Workman
The American traveller and mountaineer explored the Karakoram and the Himalaya with William Workman, took part in mapping glaciers and in 1906 climbed Pinnacle Peak, about 6930 m high. The altitudes of the early expeditions were measured imprecisely, but the scale of the work itself is not in doubt. Workman also used her fame and her public lectures in support of votes for women.
Miriam O’Brien Underhill
Through the 1920s and 1930s Underhill consistently pressed the idea of women climbing without a guide, where the woman is neither a guide’s client nor a secondary member of the party. With Alice Damesme she made the traverse of the Grépon without men. Her phrase “manless climbing” sounds historical today, but at the time it stood for a woman’s right to make the technical decisions and to answer for the rope.
The Himalaya, Everest and the first women’s expeditions
Claude Kogan
The Frenchwoman Claude Kogan was one of the strongest high-altitude climbers of the 1950s. After her ascent of Nun in 1953 she organised a women’s expedition to Cho Oyu in 1959. Kogan and Claudine van der Stratten were killed in an avalanche. The project mattered not because it was made up of women but because women themselves led a difficult Himalayan expedition at a time when they were rarely trusted even with a place in a national team.
Junko Tabei
On 16 May 1975 Junko Tabei became the first woman on Everest. The Japanese women’s expedition survived an avalanche that buried the camp; Tabei was injured but carried on with the climb. In 1992 she became the first woman to complete the highest summits of the continents. Her legacy does not stop at those two “firsts”: Tabei founded women’s clubs, worked on the ecology of the mountains and went on climbing after a cancer diagnosis.
Wanda Rutkiewicz
The Pole Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first European woman and the third woman on Everest in 1978, and in 1986 the first woman on K2. She put together independent women’s teams and set out to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders. Rutkiewicz disappeared on Kangchenjunga in 1992. Her strongest contribution is not the number of summits but the combination of leadership, technical preparation and ambition in an age when Polish high-altitude mountaineering ran on a chronic want of money and equipment.
Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz and Krystyna Palmowska
The Polish school produced more than one star. Palmowska and Anna Czerwińska made independent women’s ascents in the Karakoram; Palmowska, with Anna Czerwińska and Wanda Rutkiewicz, climbed Nanga Parbat in 1985. Czerwińska later became the oldest woman of her time on Everest. Their results show why the history cannot be reduced to a single national hero.
Lydia Bradey and Chantal Mauduit
The New Zealander Lydia Bradey claimed the first ascent of Everest by a woman without supplementary oxygen in 1988; the result was argued over for a long time because of a conflict inside the team, but was recognised later. The Frenchwoman Chantal Mauduit climbed six eight-thousanders without oxygen and was killed by an avalanche on Dhaulagiri in 1998. Both stories are a reminder that corroboration, the testimony of partners and transparency about the conditions are part of a sporting result.
Big walls, free climbing and the technical breakthrough
Lynn Hill
In 1993 Lynn Hill made the first free ascent of The Nose on El Capitan, and a year later repeated it in under a day. It is one of those rare results that changed the women’s canon and the general one at the same time: before her, nobody at all had been able to free the route. Hill’s line “It goes, boys” became famous, but its sporting meaning is simpler: technique, an understanding of movement and precision turned out to matter more than the familiar idea of brute strength.
Catherine Destivelle
The Frenchwoman Destivelle first dominated competition climbing, then turned to solo ascents of the big alpine walls. She soloed routes on the north face of the Eiger, on the Matterhorn and on the Grandes Jorasses, and in 1992 opened a new route on the west face of the Petit Dru. Her career tied television fame to serious technical mountaineering.
Alison Hargreaves
The Briton Alison Hargreaves soloed six of the classic north faces of the Alps in a single season, in 1995 climbed Everest without oxygen and without Sherpa support, and then died descending from K2. After the tragedy the press was preoccupied with whether a mother had the right to take such risks — a question almost never put to fathers who climb. The argument became a textbook case of the double standard around women’s achievements.
Silvia Vidal, Ines Papert and Liv Sansoz
The Spaniard Silvia Vidal is known for self-sufficient solo ascents of remote big walls, often with no communications at all. Ines Papert carried her mastery of ice climbing across to serious mixed faces and expedition routes. Liv Sansoz, after winning in sport climbing, climbed all 82 alpine four-thousanders in a year. These careers show the range a climber can now cover: competition, rock, ice, paragliding and expedition self-sufficiency can all belong to one life.
Women on all fourteen eight-thousanders
| Climber | Set completed | Why the result matters |
|---|---|---|
| Edurne Pasaban | 2010 | The first woman with a generally accepted complete set of all 14 eight-thousanders |
| Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner | 2011 | The first woman to finish all 14 without supplementary oxygen; K2 was the last of them |
| Nives Meroi | 2017 | Climbed the set without oxygen, for the most part roped permanently with Romano Benet |
The South Korean Oh Eun-sun announced that she had completed the set before Pasaban, but her 2009 ascent of Kangchenjunga remained disputed and was not accepted by a number of the key statistical sources. There is an editorial principle in that which matters: the speed of an announcement is no substitute for verification.
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner
The Austrian did not simply collect fourteen summits. She refused supplementary oxygen and finished the set on K2 by the north route in a small international team. In her career the tally is subordinate to the style: several times she turned back, and after the tragedy on Dhaulagiri she took part in the rescue instead of carrying on with the climb.
Nives Meroi
The Italian Meroi and Romano Benet built their careers as a rope of two. In 2009, when Benet was found to have a serious illness, Meroi broke off the race for the record; after his treatment they came back and finished the set together. It is one of the best answers to the question of what matters more than a summit: partnership here is not a decorative extra but the frame of an entire climbing life.
Lhakpa Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa
Pasang Lhamu became the first Nepali woman on Everest in 1993 and died on the descent. Lhakpa Sherpa has reached the summit many times over, holding a high-altitude career together with life as an emigrant and hard work outside the sport. There is more about them in the piece on the great mountaineers of Nepal.
How to compare women’s achievements honestly
Do not cut a result off from its period. Leather boots, heavy wool, unreliable ropes and the absence of an accurate forecast or of satellite communications raised the price of a mistake. At the same time, wealthy early women travellers could hire large caravans. Context has to take in the constraints and the resources available alike.
Do not turn women’s history into a list of “first women”. Being first matters when it breaks a barrier. But Lynn Hill’s route is valuable first of all as the first free ascent by anybody, not as a women’s record. The same holds for new routes, for rescues and for leading expeditions.
State the oxygen, the support and the style. A climb with oxygen can be outstanding and sensible, but it is not the same thing as a climb without it. A line fixed in advance and a new self-sufficient route are likewise different disciplines. This is worked through in detail in the article on alpine and expedition style.
Do not romanticise a death. A tragedy makes a name better known, but it should not raise the assessment by itself. Good mountaineering history keeps a person’s dignity and at the same time examines the decisions, the weather and the objective danger.
See the mountains, not just watch them
The story of the great women climbers begins not with a record but with a well-judged first route. Have a look at the “Seven Summits” programme, the treks with views of the eight-thousanders and our current mountain programmes.
Questions and answers
Who was the first woman on Everest
Junko Tabei of Japan climbed Everest on 16 May 1975.
Who was the first woman on all 14 eight-thousanders
The generally accepted claim belongs to Edurne Pasaban, who completed the set in 2010. Oh Eun-sun’s claim to an earlier result is disputed because of Kangchenjunga.
Who has climbed all 14 eight-thousanders without oxygen
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was the first woman to complete a corroborated set without supplementary oxygen, in 2011. Nives Meroi did so later.
Why Wanda Rutkiewicz counts as one of the great
She was the first European woman on Everest, the first woman on K2, led women’s expeditions and became the central figure of the strongest Polish high-altitude school.
Sources and method
Fact checking: UIAA, the archive of American Alpine Journal, Piolets d’Or, official biographies and the archives of national mountaineering organisations. The list is not an official federation ranking.