ABSTRACT
It is the end of 1972; time to stop and glance back at the unfolding, still unfinished, pageant of women’s mountaineering. In 1808 the first woman stood on the summit of Mont Blanc; just over a hundred years ago Lucy Walker climbed the Matterhorn; in the ‘naughty nineties’ Mrs Aubrey Le Blond was pioneering winter ascents; by the first decade of the present century women had their own mountaineering clubs; the twenties and thirties saw a spate of cordées féminines; the fifties became the ‘mother and daughter’ era; Himalayan adventures crowded the sixties and in 1971 an Everest Expedition included, for the first time, a woman member. It is a story of adventure, courage, companionship, good fun, and, for many, incomparable joy. There are highlights in the many-hued kaleidoscope, and stars that gleam with a special brilliance; but through the years each woman climber, however undistinguished, has been a thread in the tapestry. The story is not ended and never will be while there are still hills to climb.
