expeditions.
Sponsorships were necessary to turn a profit on big climbs, and Scott’s bold personality and attractiveness made perfect marketing material. In addition to being the face of the company, he needed to prove his worth to draw clients. Mount Everest became priority number one. Without an Everest summit on his résumé, clients would turn to other companies before his. The competition grew increasingly fierce as guide companies perfected their business models. Though the demand in the industry proved real, it came with growing pains. Scott practiced alpine-style climbing. This method focused on highly trained climbers who packed light. Efficiency and speed were carefully balanced with safety. Alpine-style climbers rarely turned to supplemental oxygen, medication, or high-altitude workers to aid their climbs.
Though alpine style was a respected method, the reality for guided adventures was expedition-style climbing, which required monumental planning. A push to the summit was no longer two individuals and all they could carry. Expedition-style climbing enlisted high-altitude workers who spent time fixing ropes on trails in advance of clients. Supplies were shuttled up mountainsides with tents pitched to shelter clients at higher camps. Supplemental oxygen (known as “Os”) and drugs to counteract the side effects of increased altitude were widely embraced. Such climbs came with a price, upward of $60,000 at that time for an expedition that lasted many weeks and without a guaranteed summit.
The race to meet the demand for adventure companies exposed a divide between those who’d been raised on alpine-style climbing and those who were seeking expedition-style adventures. Guiding companies were launched by those with climbing experience, talent, and raw energy. These were necessary assets, but the business knowledge was sometimes missing. Clients were looking for the full package: companies that could provide the training, handle the logistics, and get them up the mountain. Furnishing perks while providing a focus on proper training and safety set in motion an incongruity that persists today.
The year 1990 marked a milestone for Scott and subsequently for Mountain Madness. Lhotse, a next-door neighbor to Everest and the world’s fourth highest mountain, remained unclimbed by Americans. With little fanfare, Scott and his climbing partner, Wally Berg, climbed to 27,940 feet until there was no longer mountain to climb.
Next up was K2, second to Everest in height, but a brutal and more technically challenging mountain. Nestled in the Karakoram Range, K2 is one of the range’s few peaks over 8,000 meters, each marked by glaciers and steep, dark slopes that exemplify the Turkish translation for Karakoram—black stone. Partnering with Ed Viesturs, Scott’s trip up the mountain in 1992 started and ended with drama. An early fall from a loose ice block dislocated his shoulder, stranding him at base camp for two weeks until it healed enough to try again. A subsequent attempt yielded a close call with an avalanche and the rescue of Chantal Mauduit from a high camp. After the rescue, Scott and Ed reached the summit of K2, but during a harrowing descent they were called to a second rescue, this time of New Zealand climber Gary Ball, who was suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). K2 had lived up to the hype, a reminder that it could be very dangerous to heed the alluring call of its summit.
Everest remained. The world’s tallest mountain had yet to find a place on Scott’s résumé. He’d attempted it before, in 1987 and 1989, without a summit. Several years later, in 1994, on an expedition billed as the Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition, Scott’s ascent to the top was as easy as the other attempts had been difficult. On the climb, he reaffirmed his commitment to the environment, as expedition members and high-altitude workers carried trash off the mountain, long plagued with the remnants of previous climbs.
The market for those seeking to summit 8,000-meter peaks was growing. As it erupted, one demographic played catch-up: women.
MOUNTAINEERING HAD LONG BEEN A sport portrayed in the media through the eyes of men as an escape from domestic life to the wilds of the outdoors. In many societies, being “feminine” meant staying at home, while masculinity was defined as seeking faraway adventures. By the late 1980s, the world of high-dollar, flashy expeditions had erupted. Commercially organized mountaineering tours could take clients as high as their pockets were deep. The influence of money was apparent, both in the gear developed to aid in climbs and in the amount needed to undertake far-flung trips. At the time, the commercial landscape was heavily male-dominated, resulting in women creating their own, allfemale trips.
Among the earliest to take this approach was mountaineer Arlene Blum, who in 1969 received this response to her request to join an allmale expedition in Afghanistan:
Dear Miss Blum:
Not too easy a letter to write as your prior work in Peru demonstrates your ability to go high, and a source I trust has furnished a glowing account of your pleasant nature in the mountains.
But one woman and nine men would seem to me to be unpleasant high on the open ice, not only in excretory situations, but in the easy masculine companionship which is so vital a part of the joy of an expedition.
Sorry as hell.
Aside from the perceived intrusion of females at base camp, the ability of women to undertake the same physical rigors as men was called into question, as Blum discovered. “When I asked why women wouldn’t be admitted to a commercial climb of Mount McKinley that year,” she recalled, “I was informed that women are a liability in the high mountains: They are not strong enough to carry their share of the loads and lack the emotional stability to withstand the psychological stresses of a high-altitude climb.”
There’s little doubt that the physical challenges women face in alpine climbing are different from those men face. With generally smaller bodies, women shoulder a larger percentage of their body weight than men when required to carry the basics needed for survival at high altitudes. Yet many women argue that the mental game women play is more effective and better suited to the stress of climbing. Mountaineer Vanessa O’Brien, the first American and British (dual citizen) woman to successfully summit K2 in 2017, explained it this way: “I believe women have a bit of luck, which comes in two forms. The first is their open and transparent communication style that helps them get where they need to go. The second is their mental focus that helps them stay the course when the going gets tough: and the going always gets tough. That’s quite simply, our secret.”
WITH LITTLE FANFARE, SCOTT FISCHER invited Stacy Allison to climb Everest with him in 1987. A friend from his NOLS days, Allison had the grit and talent to be part of the expedition, no matter her gender. Though the two didn’t summit, in 1988 she attempted again with a different group, this time becoming the first American woman to reach the top of the world’s highest peak. The news buoyed Scott, for if anyone could see the strength women brought to the mountains—in practice or in spirit—it was Scott. His own mother, Shirley, had graced Everest Base Camp on one of his trips there, spending time with him in the place he loved.
In 1993, elite rock climber Lynn Hill became the first person to free climb the Nose, a route on El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley. Though she’d already won competitions all over the world, she faced the same challenges as other women in terms of gender discrimination. When some attributed Hill’s success to the fact that she had small fingers and a petite frame, she responded:
Both are true facts, but there were other sections of the route that were perhaps more difficult for me because of my small size. I think those statements indicate hints of jealousy that come from sexism and the idea that men always have to be better—if a woman does something before a man, some men try to find a reason to undermine the achievement instead of just recognizing the beauty and vision of the ascent. No matter what size you are, you still have to be a very good climber to free climb the Nose, so why couldn’t they accept the fact that a woman is capable of making such a breakthrough ascent? I don’t see a point in dwelling on people’s smallminded ego problems. It’s not my problem; it’s their problem.
The conversation of whether women approached climbing differently than men evolved through the 1990s. While it was still not uncommon to recognize the basic physiological differences, people became more cautious about making assumptions based on gender. Chris adopted this approach in her own climbing. Differences existed among climbers, more