As adventure sports like climbing and mountaineering become popular, women’s visibility in the sport has also grown. Mountaineering Women is a richly illustrated collection of the awesome and often surprising stories celebrating the achievements of twenty women climbers from across the globe.
From the Amazigh (Berbers) of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to the Inca Empire, high in the Andes, women have long traversed the world’s most forbidding peaks. When, many centuries later, mountaineering took off as a sporting activity in the West, it was plucky Victorian women who defied convention to tackle the fabled summits of the European Alps. Yet despite the fact that women have a pronounced and rich history in the sport, they are conspicuously underrepresented in mountaineering literature.
Mountaineering Women seeks to readdress a narrative that frequently focuses on the exploits of white, male “explorers.” The climbers come from a wide range of nationalities, and each of their compelling stories is accompanied by a specially commissioned ink illustration and evocative black-and-white photographs. Three sixteen-page full-color photographic sections, meanwhile, reveal the mountaineers in action in mountainscapes in all their grandeur.
Bookending the main chapters is a comprehensive introduction, written by Nandini Purandare, editor of the internationally renowned Himalayan Journal, and a closing essay by professional climber Ashima Shiraishi, looking toward the future of the sport.
Reviews
An assiduous compendium, Mountaineering Women has in its taller-than-wide shape numerous graphs, charts, scientific illustrations, glossaries, and statistics, intimations of a very wonky logbook. But its main resolve is to scoop up women mountain climbers—whether on rock, moraine, ice, or combinations thereof—who have long been pushed to the margins of a sport and a history ‘almost completely dominated by men,’ and deposit them at the center of the action. Each story comes with specially commissioned ink illustrations in firmament-colored blues, some with numerically dotted lines that trace significant trails blazed, as well as photographs that lean into the black-and-white language of documentary reportage. Three sections of breath-gulpingly striking full-color photographs, arranged for maximum effect, zhoosh up the text to convey the achievements of Croston’s 20 crème de la K2-climbing crème, and give lie to the mountaineering world’s doubt-sowing discrimination and misogyny… From hand-jamming to pendulum swings, [Joanna] Croston’s climbers climb because they wouldn’t know how not to.
— Air Mail
The coffee table Bible of women’s mountaineering history… [Ensures] we all know and appreciate the women who came before us to do the unthinkable.
— Gripped
Croston shines as a storyteller… This beautiful book collects and shares the stories of extraordinary women climbers in one place, inviting readers to reckon with our unlimited potential.
— Mountain Life
Mountaineering Women provides long-awaited recognition for the many pioneering women who have made invaluable contributions to the history of climbing.
— Sir Chris Bonington
Visually impressive… Croston celebrates women who challenged societal norms for a sport that is as rewarding as it is dangerous.
— Booklist
Contributors
Joanna Croston
Author
Joanna Croston moved to the Canadian Rockies in 1998, where she is currently the director for the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival and World Tour. She has climbed many of the classic 11,000-ft peaks in the area. Her writing has appeared in Highline Magazine, Gripped, The Canadian Alpine Journal, The Canadian Rockies Annual, Mountain Life, and Alpinist.
Nandini Purandare
Introduction By
Jasmin Paris
Foreword By
Ashima Shiraishi
Afterword By
Tessa Lyons
Illustrated By
