EVEREST ASSAULT WITHOUT OXYGEN 'ONE OF THE GREATEST CLIMBS IN HISTORY'
A BRITISH climber has completed one of the greatest feats in mountaineering and become the first woman to reach the summit of Everest alone and without oxygen.
Alison Hargreaves, 33, is only the second person to scale the 29,028ft summit alone by the North Ridge, following in the footsteps of Reinhold Messner, regarded as the greatest climber alive today.
Miss Hargreaves reached the peak at 7.23 am (BST) on Saturday and returned to base camp yesterday. Her first radio message said: "To Tom and Kate, my two children. I am on top of the world and I love you dearly."
The children were yesterday at home in the West Highlands of Scotland with their father, Jim Ballard, who said he had been confident that his wife would realise her childhood ambition. He added: "This is undoubtedly the most significant piece of mountaineering by a woman anywhere in the world."
Derek Walker, general secretary of the British Mountaineering Council, agreed, saying: "This was one of the greatest climbs in history by a woman mountaineer. It compares with the hardest climbs ever achieved by man or woman."
Michael Westmacott, president of the Alpine Club and a member of the team which put Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing on the summit in 1953, was equally effusive. "This is a tremendous achievement," he said. "It has been done without oxygen from that side before, but not by a woman."
Cally Fleming, at the Nevis Range ski slope at Aonach Mor where Miss Hargreaves did much of her training, said: "This is the most important climb ever undertaken by a woman in the history of mountaineering."
Miss Hargreaves attempted the mountain last year, but was driven back by freezing winds at 27,500 ft. This time, she was forced to make her approach along the most arduous route almost on top of the North Ridge, as the wind had shot-blasted the slopes below almost bare of snow. This was the route taken by the ill-fated 1924 expedition which claimed the lives of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine.
Mr Ballard said that his wife, who spent a year training for the climb, had made her final assault "like a bat out of hell". He said: "I'm absolutely delighted she has achieved what she set out to do in such fine style, and with no dramatics." Miss Hargreaves is expected to return home at the end of the month and, after a few days' rest, return to the Himalayas for an assault on K2 next month.
Miss Hargreaves' conquest of Everest on her fourth expedition to the Himalayas is the latest in a line of climbing milestones that have earned her comparisons with Catherine Destivelle, the great French climber. In 1988, when six months pregnant, she became the first British woman to ascend the North Wall of the Eiger in the Alps.
In 1993 she became the first person to scale the six classic north faces of the Alpine peaks: the Eiger, Matterhorn, Grandes Jorasses, Dru, Badille and Cima Grande.
The first woman to stand on the summit of Everest was Junko Tabei from Japan in 1975, who was part of a large expedition using sherpas and oxygen masks. The Britons Rebecca Stephens and Jinette Harrison, both of whom reached the peak in 1993, were also part of large expeditions and used artificial oxygen supplies.
Stephen Venables, who became the first Briton to climb Everest solo and without oxygen in 1988, said yesterday: "It's really right at the limits of what the human body can stand to operate at 29,000ft. It so happens that the summit of Everest is right at the physiological limits of what you can do.
"You really do have to push yourself very, very hard and if you're alone up there, there is no possible chance of someone coming to rescue you."
WOMEN HAVE BEEN AT THE TOP SINCE 1808
The Times,
15 May 1995
WOMEN climbers have a record of great achievements in the Alps and Himalayas dating back to 1808 when Marie Paradis, 18, became the first woman to reach the summit of Mont Blanc (15,744ft) Europe's highest.
The youngest woman to conquer Everest is Radha Devi Thakur, 19, of India and the oldest, American Dolly Lefever, 47, both in 1993, when women's successes doubled to 32. Britons Rebecca Stephens and Dr Ginette Harrison reached the 29,028ft peak in 1993.
High-altitude climbing has taken its toll of women. Hannelore Schmatz died after climbing Everest in 1979 and in 1993 Pasang Lhamu, a sherpani, died descending from the summit. Julie Tullis of Britain died in 1986 near the top of K2, and Alison Chadwick, also British, perished on Annapurna in 1976.
.lcHaving conquered K2, Alison Hargreaves was swept to her death by an avalanche in August 1995. The second highest mountain in the world, K2 has earned the inauspicious title of "killer mountain".
