Junko Tabei, First Woman to Climb Everest 🗻 | Biography

Junko Tabei was the 36th person to reach the top of Mount Everest.. It was 22 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did it for the first time in history in 1953.

So why is it so important? because it was the first woman to climb Everest.

That is why in this article we want to tell you who Junko Tabei was, her biography and how she achieved the great feat of her life in May 1975, after a life dedicated to climbing, serious difficulties in obtaining financial support and after being buried by an avalanche during the ascent.

Junko Tabei, the climber who couldn’t climb

Junko Ishibashi, as her maiden name was, was born in Miharu (Fukushima) on September 22, 1939. She was the 5th daughter of a Japanese family that would later have two more descendants. During her childhood, she was always considered fragile and weak, but this changed.

When he was 10 years old, his school organized a trip to Mount Nasu., a group of Japanese volcanoes that groups together the 100 best-known mountains in the country. Since then, he felt a real passion for the mountains and wanted to start practicing climbing.

His family was of humble origin and could not afford such an expensive hobby, so during his childhood and adolescence he only made a few ascents inside Japan.

Junko Tabei cover LCC

This changed in 1958, when she enrolled at Showa Women’s University to study English literature. She began to collaborate with the academic journal of the Physical Society of Japan, which allowed her to join the climbing team of said society and start practicing regularly.

However, in a clearly masculine sport at the time, things were not easy. Many men refused to climb on the same team as her. Others despised her hobby and claimed that her only intention in practicing such a risky sport was to find a husband more quickly.

All this pushed her to form a climbing club for women in 1969. Ladies Climbing Club (LCC) was the first of its kind in Japan.

With the slogan “We will get an overseas expedition by ourselves”, they started climbing inside Japan, where they ascended Mount Fuji. And in a short time they managed to climb international summits such as the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps or Annapurna III. Just 3 years later, Junko Tabei was already a recognized mountaineer within her country.

The Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition

In May 1970, Junko Tabei and Hiroko Hirakawa climbed Annapurna III. At that time, LCC decided to start working on the ascent of Mount Everest.

They organized within LCC a team that was renamed the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition (Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition – JWEE). It was made up of 15 members and headed by Eiko Hisano. Most of its members worked in other professions and even two of them, including Tabei, were mothers.

The search for sponsors was hard at a time when it was still considered that women “should dedicate themselves to raising children.” Eventually, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and Nippon TV teamed up to finance the expedition.

Even so, the budget was tight and JWEE decided to resort to ingenuity and skills to save the maximum possible. Thus, they recycled old canvas seats to make waterproof bags and gloves, bought goose feathers in China to make their own sleeping bags, and organized canned food drives at the schools where some of them worked.

After getting the necessary and going through a long period of training, JWEE traveled to Kathmandu in early 1975 to start your adventure.

Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb Everest.

They decided to make the ascent following the same route that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay chose in 1953. During the following months, they prepared the ascent on the ground. The expedition began in May.

They had already managed to climb 6300 meters when an avalanche surprised the team and left the camp buried. Some of them were left unconscious. Also Junko Tabei who lost consciousness for more than 6 minutes. Finally, with the help of the Sherpas, they were able to get to the surface.

That did not discourage the climber who decided to continue the ascent. May 16, 197512 days after being buried under snow, Junko Tabei and her sherpa Ang Tsering reached the summit. The Japanese woman became the first woman to step on the top of Mount Everest.

Return and the Seven Summits

His feat had a major impact in Japan, where Tabei toured the entire country, received messages from the government and the King of Nepal, and even recorded a miniseries about the expedition. However, all that fame bothered the climber that she returned to her normal life as soon as she could.

That was not the last great milestone for Junko Tabei. He continued to dedicate himself to climbing across the different continents, getting to do it in more than 60 countries.

During the 1990/91 season, he reached the top of Mount Vinson, the highest mountain in Antarctica. That left her one step away from completing the 7 Summits.

The Seven Summits is the name given to the set of the highest peaks in each of the 7 continents, understood as two different North and South America.

he did it on June 28, 1992when it peaked at Puncak Jaya, in Indonesia. In this way, she also became the First Woman to ascend the Seven Summits..

Junko Tabei out of Climbing

Tabei has always been a nature lover and has been interested in ecology. In fact, she worked in this field on several occasions throughout her life.

In the year 2000, he studied a postgraduate course that focused on the environmental degradation of Everest as a consequence of the debris left behind by the various expeditions.

This was a subject that concerned him especially and for that reason managed the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, a non-profit organization that seeks to preserve mountain environments. Besides, led several cleaning expeditions both in Japan and in the Himalayas.

When in 2012 she was diagnosed with cancer, she did not stop climbing. Finally, the disease ended his life, at the age of 77on October 20, 2016.