Women Legends - First Indian Woman to Climb Mount Everest

first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest

Bachendri Pal is the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest. She achieved this feat on 23rd May 1984. Bachendri Pal was part of the fourth expedition, named Everest 84. She was one of the members of the elite group of six Indian women and eleven men who were part of the group. Bachendri Pal was the only woman in the group to reach the summit.

Bachendri Pal was born in 1954 in Nakuri village, Garhwal. Her first exposure to mountaineering was at the age of 12, when during a picnic she along with several schoolmates climbed a 13,123 feet high peak. After completing her studies, she joined the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM). In 1982, while at NIM, she climbed Gangotri (21,900 ft) and Rudugaria (19,091 ft). In 1985, Bachendri Pal led an Indo-Nepalese Everest Expedition team comprising of only women. The expedition created seven world records and set benchmarks for Indian mountaineering.

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Woman Legend - First Women Climbers of Everest, K2, Nanga Parbat

Woman Legend - First Women Climbers of Everest, K2, Nanga Parbat

Everesters Bachendri Pal and Santosh Yadav in Delhi - on the eve of their departure for the 1993 Everest expedition.

No woman from South Asia has climbed the K2 or Nanga Parbat. The first woman Everest climber was Junko Tabei [1975], a Japanese student & mother, who wrote two books called “Everest Mama-san” & “Yama-o-tanoshimu – Enjoying Mountains” both in Japanese. She prefers to be known as: "I'm a free spirit. Call me the free spirit of the mountains.” Her comments on climbing are understated:

"I can't understand why men make all this fuss about Everest — it's only a mountain."

"Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top — it is the will power that is the most important. This will power you cannot buy with money or be given by others — it rises from your heart."

“The mountain teaches me a lot of things. It makes me realize how trivial my personal problems are,"

In the last fifty years, more than 75 women have climbed the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest. Of these, only five have ever climbed the summit of K2 since 1954 and have since died. Three women - Wanda Rutkiewicz of Poland, Julie Tullis of Britain, and Liliane Barrard of France – were the first three women to stand on the summit. Unfortunately, Julie and Liliane died on the descent. All three were climbing without extra oxygen. Julie Tullis, from Britain, was a black belt in Karate, a teacher, a mother, and an award winning filmmaker. She died of exposure descending K2 in 1986. Only twelve women have ascended Nanga Parbat in the last 50 years. Of them, two were climbers of K2: Wanda Rutkeiwicz from Poland and Liliane Barrard from France. Liliane was the first woman to summit Nanga Parbat in 1984.

Superwomen Climbers :

Typically women have had to face resistance and male chauvinism from men’s climbing expeditions in one form or the other. Of the women climbers, the leader is undoubtedly Wanda Rutkiewicz.

Wanda Rutkiewicz , [ 1943-1992] from Poland, climbed eight of the 8000meters peaks , graduated with a master's degrees in science and in electronic engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Wroclaw. At eighteen years of age, she started climbing in the domestic Tatra mountains. Later she started climbing the Alps and the Norwegian mountains. Climbing in entirely all female teams , she went on to climb the East Pillar of Trollryggen in Norway (1968), the North Pillar of the Eiger (Messner route, 1973) and the North Face of the Matterhorn in winter (first women-only-ascent, 1978). She died in 1992 on Kanchenchunga near the summit. On 12 May she was last seen some 300 m short of the top. She was also a writer and photographer. She wrote 2 books, and dozens of articles and reports. During the last 10 years of her life she put in a lot of time / energy to film making- films on Aconcagua's South Face Gdybyś przyszedł pod tę ścianę, on K2 Requiem, on Cerro Torre, on Nanga Parbat, on Gasherbrum II and on the people of the Baltoro region Ludzie na Baltoro. She was into ecological aspects of mountain areas. She read in 1983 in Delhi a widely discussed paper on Women Mountaineers in the Himalayas and was a founding trustee of the Mountain Wilderness organization. She died climbing Kanchenchunga. See Wielicki comments on her strong nature/personality.
Rutkiewicz was a most forceful, determined person and lady-mountaineer. She received the prestigious Sitara-e Imtiaz (Star of Distinction) award of Pakistan. Posthumously she got the King Albert Medal of Merit

Christine Boskoff [B.S. in Electrical Engineering , Wisconsin University, bought “Mountain Madness” adventure company after Scott Fischer died in a 1996 avalanche ; Mountain Madness in 2002 had revenue of $400,000 last year and has averaged about 150 expeditions per year]. She has six of the 8000 meters peaks to her credit and is very much influenced by the Polish women climber Wanda Rutkiewicz :

"…Wanda was a huge influence to me. Unfortunately there really hasn't been anyone after her “ …to influence me,”…."She played a huge part in establishing a place for women in the high-altitude mountaineering world.

Chantal Mauduit of France [ died May 1998 on Nepal's Dhaulagiri plus Sherpa companion Tshering, was found in a tent at camp 3 ] has 6 peaks of 8000 meters .

Edurne Pasaban of Spain/Basque – climbed six of the 8000 meters Peaks. Mount Everest (8848m) 2001, Makalu (8485m) 2002, Cho Oyu (8188m) 2002, Lhotse (8516) 2003 Gasherbrum II (8034m) 2003 and Gasherbrum I (8080m) 2003

Italy’s – Mama-Mia Climbers :

July 2003 - Alessandra Canesti of Italy, two of the 8000 meters peaks.

July 2003 Miss Nives Meroy (Meroi) from Italy climbed five of the 8000 meters . Summited GI, GII, Broad Peak in 20 days. She has climbed three peaks (Nanga Parbat, Shishapangma, Cho_Oyu) between 1998-1999. She always climbs without artificial oxygen. She was born in Bergamo 42 years ago. "La signora Meroy" represents Italy’s Karakorams.



South Asian Women Climbers -- Devis:

Bachendri Pal was the first Indian woman on top of Everest [ worked for Tata Steel Corp. and later adopted five children of fellow Sherpa Climber who died and whose wife later died also],

[See this site for her interview: http://www.pbs.org/adventuredivas/india/divas/bpal.html] In the early ‘80s, she applied to the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, where she was tagged "Everest material." At number three of a family of five in a modest household near Nakuri, Uttarkashi in Uttaranchal State, she developed her muscles moving around in the Garhwal Himalayas.

Persisting with her education against parents wishes, she went on to get a Masters in Sanskrit. And later wrote her Everest journey in a book called "Everest: My Journey to the Top" that appeared in the book Leading Out. Facing the prospect of a forced arranged marriage, she got the National Adventure foundation into giving her a job to run an adventure training school for women and girls. In 1984 she finally made it to the Everest 84 expedition. After an avalanche that very nearly killed her and her climbing group at Camp 24,000 feet, she managed to reach Everest top on May 17, 1984, via the standard southeast ridge, becoming the first Indian woman on Everest. She currently runs a training camp at Tata Adventure Foundation, which has given support and produced about 32 Olympians, 9 World champions in different sports.


Santosh Yadav – The only woman in the world to climb Everest twice in two consecutive years -[12 May 1992, summer-1993]

Yadav climbed Everest twice in less than a year. She says that mountaineering fascinates her and comes naturally to her. She comes from a village in Rewari District of Rajasthan, where education for girls was denied. She eventually graduated from Maharani College, Jaipur in Economics. In 1986 she did advanced mountaineering courses from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi, with `A' Grades. Yadav began in 1989, with a nine-nation international climbing camp-cum-expedition to Num-Kun area. Among the 31 members she was the only woman. She climbed Mount White Needle (21,700 ft). In 1990 she was a member of the Indo-Taiwanese Saser Kangri-I (25,000 ft) Expedition. After her feats in the mountains she Iwas appointed to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. In 1991, she was a member of the Indo-Japanese Kanchenchunga (East Route) Expedition, and was chosen to join the Indian Pre-Everest Expedition to Mt Kamet (25,447 ft). Later she climbed Mt AbiGanmin (24,130 ft) Peak.

In 1992, as a member of the Indian (ITBP) Mt Everest Expedition, she performed so well and went beyond base camp – Khumbu Ice- Falls [where about 25 % of Everest climbers have died]. Finally on May 12, 1992, she stood on the summit of Mount Everest with head constable Sange Sherpa and head constable Wangchuk Sherpa. She was on the summit for about an hour-and-a-half and because the fourth member Mohan Singh was in a bad state of health, she provided him with her oxygen.

She says that she “ felt great with mixed feelings of having achieved a feat of rare variety and being the youngest woman in the world to scale the Mount Everest (until 1993). I was also the first police officer to have achieved this distinction….”

Immediately after her Everest Expedition, she was the overall leader of the Indo-Japanese Women Expedition to scale a 22,764 ft high unscaled and unnamed peak in Garhwal Himalayas. The unnamed peak was named Mt Saraswati. In 1993, as the deputy leader of Indo-Nepalese Women's Everest Expedition, she became the first and only woman in the world to climb Mt Everest twice. On this climb Yadav narrated how she slept the night at camp 4 on the way to Mt. Everest, only to realize in the morning that she had been sleeping next to the dead body of a previous climber.

Later she climbed Mt Fujiyama , led an expedition to the Andes Mt. Acancagua in Argentina on January 28, 1998 – to commemorate 50 years of India's Independence. In March 1999, she led the ``Millennium Indian Everest (Kangshung Face) Expedition-1999'' and became the first Indian to lead successfully an expedition to Mount Everest from its most dangerous and nearly impossible route ``Kangshung Face''.

Married now and with a small baby boy, and no longer working on her police job, she now devotes herself for the promotion of mountaineering and also special pilgrimage tours to Kailash and Mansarovar.

At the age of 19, Dicky Dolma was at the time the youngest woman climber of Mt.Everest [May 10, 1993 ] with the Indo-Nepali expedition led by Bachendri Pal. She comes from Palchan village, a few miles above the tourist resort town of Manali in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh in India. In 1984 she started playing with homemade skis and later at Manali Skiing Institute, she completed skiing courses and basic mountaineering courses. Married now to a skiing man, she concentrates more on skiing than climbing.
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Women Legend - The first woman on the Moon

The first woman on the Moon
In reading the NASA bio of STS-114 commander Eileen Collins, it comes as no wonder she was chosen for the momentous return to flight of the space shuttle. I won’t repeat the long list of her accomplishments, special honors, and aircraft flight experience, but the short version is that she has logged over 6,300 hours in 30 different aircraft. She is a retired Air Force colonel, and when she wore the uniform, her decorations of ribbons, medals, and insignias was impressive. She was selected by NASA in 1990 and became an astronaut in 1991. She served in numerous capacities in support of orbiter crew operations, including spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM). She trained for and served as pilot on STS-63 in February 1995 and STS-84 in May 1997. She became the first female commander of a shuttle mission with STS-93 in July 1999. It has been a long dry spell, but Collins is back in space, again as commander of a shuttle mission.

Practically anyone can name the Mercury Seven, but the first seven American women in space is a question for a game show.
If NASA was currently flying missions to the Moon, no doubt the agency would select Collins to be the first woman on walk on the lunar surface. It doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon. 2015 is the earliest hoped-for return to the Moon by the United States within the new Vision for Space Exploration. Collins is 48, so run the math. She has been with the agency for 15 years, but that can’t hold a candle to John Young, who recently retired from NASA after 42 years with the agency. Would Collins like to place her boot on luna firma? No doubt she would. Does she want to wait ten-plus years to do so? Maybe someone should ask her. Two things are for certain: she won’t be alone, and there will be a first woman on the Moon. She is alive right now. She may have just joined the astronaut corps, or she may still be in college with plans to join the Air Force and perhaps dreaming of becoming an astronaut. Whoever it is, she will probably follow much the same path that Eileen Collins did.

The glass stratosphere
Women have tried to get into space ever since Project Mercury. That subject has been ably covered by Martha Ackmann in her book, The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight published in 2003. The subject of women in space was expanded in Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space written by Yale historian Bettyann Kevles, also published in 2003. Of course, no American woman flew during Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo; only the Soviets flew a single female cosmonaut and then for political advantage—read propaganda. It was the Cold War. NASA wouldn’t accept women applicants to the astronaut corps until 1978. The first American woman to fly into space aboard the space shuttle was Sally Ride in 1983, and the glass stratosphere was finally shattered. However, the names of the many women who followed aboard the space shuttle can only be learned through a search on the web. Practically anyone can name the Mercury Seven, but the first seven American women in space is a question for a game show. Sadly, these female pioneers of space are an enigma and virtually unknown today. Nevertheless, they paved the way, and that way now points to the Moon and eventually Mars.

“That’s one small step for a woman…”
The shuttle never achieved its lofty launch schedule promised early in the program. If it had, even more women could boast of having flown in space. Being an astronaut today is a waiting game. Many astronauts, both men and women, trained yet never flew. The unspoken belief among many in the space community is that we are witnessing the last of the shuttle flights right now, because if there is one more catastrophic failure of the orbiter, there will be no more flights. Michael Griffin is right to accelerate the timeline for the Crew Exploration Vehicle. With the infrastructure already in place at KSC, it comes as no surprise a shuttle-derived launch vehicle is the frontrunner for the CEV. That just may close the gap between the retiring shuttle fleet and the new CEV and its launch vehicle. Certainly, ten years is an achievable goal in landing American men and women on the Moon. What will the first woman on the Moon say as she steps down off the ladder to the lunar surface? We will just have to wait to find out.
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