meet the first Aussie woman to climb Mt Everest

Tintin comics ignited Brigitte Muir’s spirit of adventure, and her rst mountain climbing experience was, as a child, scaling mounds of coal outside the Belgian industrial town where she grew up. It was not the most auspicious beginning, but many real mountains and a move to Victoria later, Brigitte became the rst Australian woman to climb Mount Everest, and the rst Aussie to scale the highest peak on every continent in the world.

“I really like going up,” the 60-year-old says. “There’s a sense of reaching up for something, like reaching for a star.

Her most physically testing climb was Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, where bad weather set in and what would have been a four-day climb took 14. “We had just four days’ food, and there were avalanches left, right and centre. By the time we reached the bottom, all three of us were hallucinating from adrenaline and lack of food.”

Brigitte knew climbing was dangerous but rationalised it, “until the day came when that didn’t work anymore”. Her last climb was Mount Makalu in the Himalayas. “I was at base camp when news came that one of my closest friends had been killed on the summit. You can imagine the shock. I left all my gear there and went home, and that was the last time I climbed. I understood what it is like to lose someone you love to the mountains. I grieved for a couple of years. I had lost a friend and everything that was my life.”

Today Brigitte is working on literacy and empowerment projects with women in Nepal, leading treks and coaching aspiring climbers.

“It was easy to be in the here and now, having fun, when I was climbing. Finding that in everyday life has taken discipline,” she says. “But once you get it, it’s like being a child again. It’s about pushing yourself, seeing how far you can go.”

To experience one of Brigitte’s treks and learn about her charitable work, visit beyondthesmile.net