The first woman to climb Everest S
Junko Tabei, mountaineer: b Miharu, Fukushima Prefecture, September 22, 1939; m Masanobu, 1d, 1s; d Kawagoe, October 20, 2016, aged 77.
he so nearly never made it. In May 1975 Junko Tabei, the Japanese mountaineer who was soon to be the first woman to climb Everest, instantly recognised a rumbling sound. She had been asleep in freezing conditions in a camp on the route to the Everest summit about 6400m (21,000ft) above sea level.
The sound was of an avalanche that engulfed Tabei and her 14 female climbing companions. Their tents collapsed and they were buried under a mass of snow, ice and tangled equipment. She was stuck under several companions, struggling to breathe, convinced she would die. Before losing consciousness she had, she recalled, a sudden horrific vision of her young daughter back at home near Tokyo, weeping at her mother’s funeral.
Then some of the Sherpas accompanying the expedition managed to drag her out, and she discovered that all her climbing companions had also survived. Tabei was in severe pain, badly bruised with her back twisted, unable to walk for two days as she recuperated in a sleeping bag. Yet anyone who mistook her diminutive figure – just under 5ft tall – for physical or mental frailty was mistaken. Despite the trauma of the avalanche and her close escape, despite knowing how many had perished on this mountain before, as leader of the expedition already two months under way, ‘‘I was determined to continue’’.
Less than two weeks later, on the morning of May 16, 1975, there was a final perilous moment as Tabei approached the summit of the world’s tallest mountain in Nepal. She believed she had researched the route carefully, the same southern route taken by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing in the first ascent of Everest in 1953.
However, she was confronted now with a final treacherous knifeedge ridge to be traversed, covered in ice, with falls of several thousand metres on either side, of which she had been largely unaware.
‘‘No one told me before that the path was that horrible.’’ Accompanied by a single Sherpa, Sirdar Ang Tsering, Tabei crawled along it sideways as high winds blew all around, gripping by kicking crampon points into the ice. ‘‘I had never felt that tense in my entire life,’’ she recalled. ‘‘I felt all my hair standing on end.’’
Then, suddenly, she was there. Still in great pain, all she felt was relief – as well as incipient anxiety about the descent. She stuck Japanese and Nepalese flags on the summit, admired the view and took pictures for just under an hour. Her ambition was fulfilled: ‘‘There was never a question in my mind that I wanted to climb that mountain, no matter what other people said.’’
Those words hinted at the extent to which Tabei had overcome not only the practical challenges of mounting such an expedition, but also the patronising indifference or overt hostility of a Japanese society and international climbing fraternity that did not believe that women could or should scale such peaks. Even after her triumph amid huge international coverage she was described by some as ‘‘Everest Mummy’’ or ‘‘housewife climber’’.
Such attitudes had never stopped her. After discovering her passion for climbing in Japan she found many male mountaineers unwilling to accompany her, so in 1969 she founded a Ladies Climbing Club – the first of its kind in Japan.
She and her companions tackled Annapurna in 1970 and then set about planning an attempt on Everest. She raised money as best she could through giving music lessons, but major sponsorship was needed.
Eventually a Japanese newspaper and broadcaster did supply funds – linking the expedition to the UN’s 1975 International Year of Women. After permission was obtained from the Nepalese authorities, the all-women expedition – supported by a small number of Sherpas – went ahead.
Tabei’s husband, Masanobu, a fellow mountaineer who encouraged her climbing, looked after their young daughter. They later also had a son.
Aware of the hazards of the mountaineering they both loved, they agreed to have a first child before Tabei embarked on her greatest challenge with Everest.
Her own childhood had been overshadowed by World War II and its aftermath, as Japan faced catastrophic defeat. Though her family was not poor there was little for anyone to eat during the war and Junko was a frail child, suffering regularly from fevers and lung infections.
When she was 10 a teacher took her and her classmates to climb Mt Asahi and Mt Chausu. After the privations of postwar life, the climb was a revelation: ‘‘I got to see a world I didn’t know, and that made me eager to see other places I’d never seen before.’’
After studying English and American literature at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo, she joined adult climbing associations in the early 1960s. Her first thought after descending from Everest, she said, was ‘‘I think I’d like to go to the South Pole’’.
She became the first woman to climb the highest mountain in each continent, including Kilimanjaro in Africa and Mt McKinley in Alaska. Other destinations included Antarctica, Russia, Ireland, Indonesia, Niger and Oman. ‘‘I’ve never felt like stopping climbing, and I never will, even when I have seen people killed in accidents in the mountains,’’ she said. On the summits, ‘‘I feel calm, free of cares.’’
Shocked by some of the poverty she had discovered in places such as India and Nepal, Tabei devoted some of her energies to charitable and social projects, such as helping the Sherpa villages. She was critical of the way in which Everest effectively evolved into a tourist destination, and climbers would leave behind tonnes of detritus. Reaching the summit had ‘‘become a status symbol’’.
‘‘What matters,’’ she once said, ‘‘is willpower. Willpower to reach the top.’’
‘‘I feel calm, free of cares.’’ Junko Tabei on the feeling on reaching summits