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How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt

Palgrave Macmillan

WHO, WHY, AND HOW?

Few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel.

—GERTRUDE BELL, TWENTIETH-CENTURY DESERT EXPLORER

Take every precaution and abandon all fear.

—MARY HALL, NINETEENTH-CENTURY SELF-STYLED "WORLD TOURIST"

WHO?

Ask someone to describe a typical explorer and they will usually have a pretty good idea. Explorers have lined faces, scraggy beards, skin that has been punished by the wind and sun. Sometimes they wear furs; sometimes they wear khaki. They either smile at the camera in triumph or they stare with gritty resolution.

And they are men.

Or are they?

Which explorer found the lost city of Cana in the Middle East?

Which mountaineer first mapped the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas?

Who was first to the top of Huascarán in Peru?

Which European was first to visit the Ottoman harem in Constantinople?

Who held the world record for the fastest flight from Britain to Australia for 44 years?

You'll find the answers to all of these questions within these pages, and none of the protagonists will have a scraggy beard. This book is about female explorers and travelers. Who were they? What did they achieve? And what can we learn from them?

The lost history of female exploration includes women who traveled to every corner of the globe: mountaineers like Fanny Bullock Workman and Annie Smith Peck, sailors like Ann Davison and Naomi James, desert explorers such as Rosita Forbes and Freya Stark, polar explorers such as Ann Bancroft and Pam Flowers, and "African queens" such as May French Sheldon and Mary Kingsley. A handful of them are still well known today, some enjoyed just a few fleeting months in the headlines, and others never saw the limelight at all.

Of course, for most of them, fame was not what spurred them into a life of exploration. They were not traveling for posterity; they were driven by what Martin Luther King called the "fierce urgency of now." Ella Maillart didn't make incredible journeys through central Asia hoping to join Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott in the pantheon of great explorers; she did it because she was desperately excited to encounter other cultures. It would be a tragedy, though, if the exploits of Maillart and the other great women explorers were forgotten. Their stories are just as entertaining and just as inspiring as any of the more familiar exploration tales.

We'll begin, though, by posing the question that no explorer likes to hear:

WHY?

For most adventurers and travelers, male or female, the answer to "why?" is a complex mixture of desires and emotions, often combined with a lot of vagueness and happenstance. "Because it is there," in order to go beyond "the far blue mountains" or "the far horizon" are just some of the many stock answers trotted out by reluctant interviewees who cannot or do not want to explain their wanderlust. This is an important question, though, for anyone trying to look at the differences between male and female travelers, so it is worth a closer look.

Some reasons are common to both sexes. Isabella Bird, for example, was one of several people who first went abroad for health reasons. At home in Victorian Britain, she was a virtual invalid who suffered from insomnia, spinal prostration, boils, severe headaches, hair loss, muscular spasms, and depression. But once on the trail, she was transformed into a fearless adventurer and expert horsewoman who traveled all around the world, from Australia, to Japan, to Hawaii, to the Rocky Mountains and the deserts of Kurdistan.

The British journalist Beatrix Bulstrode was one of many explorers who went in search of an alternative to modern civilization. She made an expedition to the wilds of Mongolia in 1913, hoping to "revert to the primitive," only to discover that, after a couple of months, the primitive had become "rather predictable."

The American aviatrix Amelia Earhart was one of the few people who confessed her motivation, though undoubtedly it was shared by many others. As her autobiography proclaimed, she made a series of daring, long-distance plane journeys quite simply for the fun of it.

You'll find versions of the common "whys" in the biographies of both male and female explorers, but there are some answers that seem to be more gender specific.

WHY WOMEN EXPLORE

For Womankind?

No man ever climbed a mountain or crossed a river to prove what a man could do, though several might have done it for Mankind, with a capital M. For women, it has been different. To a much greater extent, they were going against expectations and trespassing in a male realm. Some politely ignored this, but others saw their successes and failures very much in terms of gender. Alexandra David-Néel wrote that she made her famous journey to Lhasa in 1924 to show what "the will of a woman could do." A decade earlier, the American mountaineer Fanny Bullock Workman was photographed on top of a mountain pass in the Karakoram, holding up a banner calling for "Votes for Women." It would be a mistake, however, to think that all female explorers were feminists. In fact, some were at pains to point out the opposite. Gertrude Bell, one of the most famous women travelers of the early twentieth century, was a founder member of the British Women's Anti-Suffrage League. And more recent women, from the mountaineer Julie Tullis to the sailor Clare Francis, have written about their dislike of so-called women's lib.

To Change Sex

Apart from Jan, née James, Morris, the famous travel writer who had a sex change operation in the early 1970s, few male explorers have had to deal with complex gender identity issues. To put it more simply, not very many of them have had to spend a lot of time dressed up as women. However, several notable women throughout history had to pass themselves off as men, and not just for a day. Stella Court Treatt drove all the way through Africa from the Cape to Cairo in the 1920s dressed as a boy. Isabelle Eberhardt wandered around North Africa disguised as an Arab scholar, and Lady Hester Stanhope spent much of her strange life decked out like a well-to-do Turkish merchant. For most of these women, cross-dressing was a necessary evil that facilitated their travel, but in the behavior of certain women, you sometimes get a whiff of something more transgressive. Dressing as men made their travels smoother, but it also gave them the opportunity to explore their sexuality and gender. When Sarah Hobson trekked around Iran masquerading as a young British man, not only was she propositioned by Iranian women and their fathers who saw her as a good catch for their daughters, but she also found herself flirting with local girls and enjoying the crude jokes of the men she hung out with. Isabelle Eberhardt certainly had a very complex and active sex life, and she clearly enjoyed playing with gender and identity.

For the Sake of Their Dead Husbands

There are no male explorers who traveled for the sake of their wives' reputation, but a small and fascinating group of women took to the trail to settle their dead husbands' unfinished business. In 1903, for example, Mina Hubbard became the first person to cross Labrador in Canada by canoe. It took considerable guts: her husband, Leonidas, had starved to death on his attempt. Not only did Mina Hubbard have to battle against the environment, but she also had to race against her husband's old friends who were determined to beat her to the prize. Similarly, Ruth Harkness, a New York socialite and fashion designer, went to China in 1936, aiming to bring the first live panda back to the United States. Her husband, Bill, had died in Shanghai earlier that year, having spent 13 frustrating months trying to capture the mythical creature. Like Mina Hubbard, Ruth Harkness had to contend with one of her husband's former partners who had set up a rival expedition. After several weeks of difficult going, she and her team managed to capture a baby panda; Harkness then had the equally tough job of nursing furry little Su-Lin all the way back to Chicago.

To Lose Weight!

Several women travelers and mountaineers commented wryly in their memoirs that exploration and adventure are good for weight loss. For example, Caroline Hamilton and the four British women who trekked to the South Pole in 2000 lost a total of 97 pounds, the equivalent weight of the smallest member of their team. However, as Caroline and the others all noted, any fat lost on the ice invariably makes a comeback as soon as you return home.

If there is an underlying theme in women's "whys," it is the idea of escape. Home often meant rigid social conventions, and traveling abroad offered the possibility of reinventing yourself.

WHY MEN EXPLORE

For King and Country

When Caroline Hamilton and an intrepid team of British women reached the South Pole in January 2000, they sang the national anthem, much to the amusement of scientists at a nearby American base. They were the exception that proved the rule. Patriotism has rarely been a motivation for women explorers, although it has frequently been a very important one for men. In the nineteenth century, exploration was often seen as part of the empire-building strategies of the colonial powers, and no explorer's pack was complete without his national flag, to be raised at the top of the mountain, the end of the river, or the apex of the pole. Looking through their expedition accounts, it is clear that occasionally women travelers did (and still do) play the patriotic card—principally in order to raise money—but, comparing male and female travelers as a whole, nationalistic rivalry seems like much more of a male trait.

To Suffer

A lot of exploration books written by men include passages of what can be best described as "painography": long, detailed descriptions of suffering endured by the author. With some, you almost suspect that pain is part of the pleasure. Wilfred Thesiger, the desert explorer, for example, loved to describe the minimal rations and physical privations of his travels, and Roald Amundsen claimed that he was inspired set off for the Arctic after reading about the suffering of previous polar explorers. Few women, if any, match Thesiger's or Amundsen's relish for suffering. Many did experience pain and discomfort, but in their accounts they rarely dwell on it. Ida Pfeiffer, the nineteenth-century Viennese globe-trotter, walked through the jungles of Sumatra in bare feet because she could not find suitable shoes! At night, her guides used to lever thorns out of her soles with their machetes, but she never mentioned whether it hurt or not. There is no equivalent in women's exploration to the archetypal scene when the American polar explorer Robert Peary cuts off his frostbitten toes with a penknife and carves Hannibal's motto, "I shall find a way or make one," on the wall of his miserable wooden hut. Masochism seems to be a very male predilection.

First-ism

"First-ism" was, and still is, one of the most common motivations for alpha male explorers. They race to the poles, to the source of the Nile, to the top of Everest and the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, aiming to get into the history books ahead of their rivals. Certainly there were, and still are, women who want to be remembered as the first to achieve something but, as with patriotism, this does not seem to have been quite such an important issue. Perhaps the truth is that women weren't really prone to first-ism because by the time they entered the race, the first prizes had already been taken. Or perhaps, like the great Swiss explorer Ella Maillart, they love travel for its own sake, not because they feel the need to assert themselves over others. Being the first woman to climb Everest or cross the Sahara has never had quite the same cachet as being the first person to do it. First-ism sometimes was a factor when women were trying to raise money, but in general, women explorers don't seem to have the same obsessive competitiveness as men.

Ultimately, whatever the "why" there are certain basic "hows" that have to be attended to before an expedition begins. Money has to be raised, teams have to be assembled, and equipment has to be procured; all of this is common for any adventurer, but, again, there are frequently differences in approach between genders.

FAMOUS SECONDS

SECOND WOMAN TO CLIMB MONT BLANC

In 1838 the French aristocrat Henriette D'Angeville claimed to have been the "first lady" to climb Mont Blanc. Not true. In her account, she didn't even mention her predecessor, the peasant girl Maria Paradis (who made the first female ascent in 1809).

SECOND WOMAN TO CLIMB EVEREST

Mrs. Phantog, a native Tibetan, was a member of the Chinese team that scaled Everest from the Tibetan side in the summer of 1975, 11 days after the Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit. Initially, many Western climbers were very suspicious of their ascent. Proof came a few months later when a British team found a Chinese surveying marker that had been left at the top of Everest.

SECOND WOMAN INTO SPACE

The Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Yevgenyevna was the second woman in space, and the first to make a space walk, 19 years after Valentina Tereshova and 7 months before Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut.

SECOND WOMEN TO REACH THE SOUTH POLE

The first women to reach the South Pole were scientists who flew there in 1969, but the first to get there under their own steam were Victoria Murden and Shirley Metz, who were among a party that skied to the pole 20 years later in 1989.

SECOND WOMAN TO SAIL AROUND THE WORLD SINGLE-HANDED

Between September 1977 and June 1978, the novice New Zealand yachtswoman Naomi James made an amazing single-handed voyage around the world, seemingly unaware of her Polish rival, Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz, who had in fact started more than a year earlier.

HOW TO RAISE MONEY

Raising money is one of those tedious but necessary endeavors that invariably require more time and effort than anyone anticipates. History has shown that it is much easier for men, and that women have found it hard to get government (and particularly military) funding. Today things are a little easier, but corporate sponsors often are reluctant to fund women's expeditions, either because they think that female teams are less likely to succeed or from sheer prejudice.

Nevertheless, one way or another, women have found a way to pay their way.

By Getting a Laugh

In 1978, the American mountaineer Arlene Blum put together an expedition to Annapurna in the Himalayas. Faced with a projected bill for $80,000, she and her team initially turned to the usual fundraising strategies: holding dinners, balls, and concerts and selling bumper stickers. None of these yielded much cash, but then someone came up with the bright idea of selling an expedition T-shirt, and someone else came up with the even brighter idea of using the slogan: "A Woman's Place Is on Top ... of Annapurna." Its mixture of humor and sexual assertion was perfect for the times; Blum and her team managed to sell over 15,000 T-shirts, which went a long way toward financing their expedition.

£64 7s. 10d

To travel from Dunkirk to Delhi by bicycle (personal savings)

—DERVLA MURPHY, 1963

£3,350

To buy a yacht fit for a solo crossing of the Atlantic (the bank of Mom and Dad)

—NICOLETTE MILNES WALKER, 1971

$500,000

To rent a plane to fly from Cape Town to the Antarctic (corporate sponsorship)

—THE ARNESEN-BANCROFT TRANS ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, 2001

By Not Looking the Part

In 1937, the Anglo-Italian explorer Freya Stark was trying to fund a joint archaeological and cultural expedition to Arabia. She was advised to visit Baron "Cheers" Wakefield of Hythe, the millionaire behind Castrol Oil, who had a reputation for sponsoring women's expeditions. When she paid him a call, Lord Wakefield wasn't in the least interested in talking about archaeology or Arab culture, but he was very eager to show Stark photographs of all the famous people he had met. She listened patiently, flirted gently, and charmed him into handing over £1,500, in those days a significant sum. Afterward, Lord Wakefield told a friend that he'd offered her the money not because he liked the idea of the expedition but because Freya Stark looked so unlike his idea of an explorer.

By Crying a Lot

After failing on her first attempt to traverse Antarctica in 1993, Ann Bancroft returned to the United States $450,000 in debt, which took her many years to pay off. So when in 1998 she decided to make another attempt, she took on professional fundraisers Charlie Hartwell and Sarah and Fred Haberman. However, even with full time organisers on board, Anne still struggled to raise money. Faced with frequent and intensely frustrating rejection, she and her team found themselves bursting into tears during meetings. Eventually, however, what they dubbed "the crying tour" paid off, and they raised the $1.5 million necessary to make the expedition a reality. It took a lot of effort and a lot of tissues.

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE PRESS

I don't care what anyone writes about me, so long as it isn't true.

—DOROTHY PARKER

Publicity often goes hand in hand with sponsorship, but beware: The press has always been a fickle friend to explorers. The only thing journalists like more than creating heroes and heroines is destroying them ... or at least poking a little fun. This is particularly the case when it comes to women, who frequently have been seen as either victims or viragos.

When, in 1908, the British novelist Charlotte Mansfield announced that she was about to set off on a perilous expedition to Africa, one editor asked if she might agree to get lost for six weeks and then give him an exclusive on her "rescue." Another sent a telegram asking if she wouldn't mind asking several leading suffragettes to accompany her.

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH THE PRESS

DON'T MIX PHOTOGRAPHERS AND BOYFRIENDS

British yachtswoman Clare Francis got a lot of press after her solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1973. Most journalists were very respectful, but one photographer insisted that she should pose in a bikini for some "action shots" on her yacht. He did not realize that Clare's boyfriend, Jacques Redon, was also on board; when he heard the photographer's demands, Redon quickly came up on deck and sent the man running for the quayside.

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Excerpted from How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt by Mick Conefrey. Copyright © 2011 Mick Conefrey. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
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