Cathy O'Dowd (born 1968) is a South African rock climber, mountaineer, author and motivational speaker. She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest from both the south and north sides on 25 May 1996 and 29 May 1999, respectively. [1] [2]
O’Dowd grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and attended St. Andrew's School for Girls. She began climbing while at the university. When she was 21, she took part in her first mountain expedition, to the Ruwenzori in Central Africa. [3]
Towards the end of 1995, O'Dowd was finishing a master's degree in Media Studies at Rhodes University when she applied for and got a place on the First South African Everest Expedition. On 11 May 1996, eight climbers died in a severe blizzard on their descent from the summit on the south side. This included a climbing guide and the leaders of two expeditions, American Scott Fischer and the New Zealander Rob Hall. [4] [5] O'Dowd was at the high camp just below the southeast ridge preparing to summit with her expedition when the blizzard struck, forcing the team to delay the summit attempt. [6] She finally reached the summit on 25 May 1996. One member of the South African party, 37-year-old Bruce Herrod, died on the descent. His body was discovered the following year by an Indonesian expedition party led by Anatoli Boukreev.
In 1998 she attempted the north side of Everest, where George Mallory had disappeared in 1924. Her attempt ended hours from the summit when she came across Francys Arsentiev, an American climber who had collapsed. They attempted to help her for over an hour but were forced to turn around and descend, leaving Arsentiev behind. Two of the Sherpas went on to the summit. [7] [8] She described this decision to Michael Buerk on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Choice' aired in November 2009. In 1999 she returned, and on this occasion succeeded, becoming the first woman to climb Everest from both north and south sides. In 2000, she became the fourth woman to climb Lhotse, the world's fourth highest mountain. [1]
In 2003, she made an unsuccessful attempt at a new route up the east face of Everest.
In the spring of 2004 she joined British woman Rona Cant and Norwegian Per-Thore-Hansen on a dog-sled expedition of 650 km through the Norwegian Arctic, from Styggedalen to Nordkapp, the most northerly point in Europe. [9]
Cathy O'Dowd has climbed mountains across southern and central Africa, in South America, in the Alps and in the Himalaya. She remains an active mountaineer, rock-climber and skier.[ citation needed ]
She married the First South African Everest Expedition leader Ian Woodall in 2001 and lives in Andorra in the Pyrenees. [10]
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven traditional continents. Climbing to the summit of all of them was first done on 30 April 1985 by Richard Bass. Once considered a mountaineering challenge, in January 2023, Climbing said "Today, the Seven Summits are a relatively common—almost cliché—tour of each continent's highest peak", and that the real challenge was the Explorer's Grand Slam, the Seven Summits with the North and South poles.
Anatoli Nikolaevich Boukreev was a Soviet and Kazakhstani mountaineer who made ascents of 10 of the 14 eight-thousander peaks—those above 8,000 m (26,247 ft)—without supplemental oxygen. From 1989 through 1997, he made 18 successful ascents of peaks above 8000 m.
Scott Eugene Fischer was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He was renowned for his ascents of the world's highest mountains made without the use of supplemental oxygen. Fischer and Wally Berg were the first Americans to summit Lhotse, the world's fourth highest peak. Fischer, Charley Mace, and Ed Viesturs summitted K2 without supplemental oxygen. Fischer first climbed Mount Everest in 1994 and later died during the 1996 blizzard on Everest while descending from the peak.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a storm. Krakauer's expedition was led by guide Rob Hall. Other groups were trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants.
Edmund Viesturs is an American high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He was the first American climber to ascend all 14 of the world's eight-thousander mountains, and the 5th person to do so without supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted peaks of over 8,000 meters on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times.
Yasuko Namba was the second Japanese woman to climb the Seven Summits. Namba worked as a businesswoman for Federal Express in Japan, but her hobby of mountaineering took her all over the world. She first summited Kilimanjaro on New Year's Day in 1982, and summited Aconcagua exactly two years later. She reached the summit of Denali on July 1, 1985, and the summit of Mount Elbrus on August 1, 1992. After summiting the Vinson Massif on December 29, 1993, and the Carstensz Pyramid on November 12, 1994, Namba's final summit to reach was Mount Everest. She signed on with Rob Hall's guiding company, Adventure Consultants, and reached the summit in May 1996, but died during her descent in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
Robert Edwin Hall was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and the expedition has been dramatised in the 2015 film Everest. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth ascent to the summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer.
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at 8,849 metres (29,031.7 ft) above sea level. It is situated in the Himalayan range of Solukhumbu district, Nepal.
Ian Woodall is a British mountain climber who has climbed Mount Everest several times.
Francys Arsentiev became the first woman from the United States to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen, on May 22, 1998. She then died during the descent.
Green Boots is the body of an unidentified climber that became a landmark on the main Northeast ridge route of Mount Everest. The body has not been officially identified, but is believed to be Tsewang Paljor, an Indian climber who died on Everest in 1996. The term Green Boots originated from the green Koflach mountaineering boots on his feet. All expeditions from the north side encountered the body curled in the limestone alcove cave at 8,500 m (27,900 ft), until it was moved in 2014.
The 1996 Mount Everest disaster occurred on 10–11 May 1996 when eight climbers caught in a blizzard died on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit. Over the entire season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest season on Mount Everest at the time and the third deadliest after the 22 fatalities resulting from avalanches caused by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 16 fatalities of the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The 1996 disaster received widespread publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Hannelore Schmatz was a German climber and the fourth woman to summit Mount Everest. She collapsed and died as she was returning from summiting Everest via the southern route; Schmatz was the first woman and first German citizen to die on the upper slopes of Everest.
Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa was a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineering guide, climber and porter, best known for his work as the climbing Sirdar for Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness expedition to Everest in Spring 1996, when a freak storm led to the deaths of eight climbers from several expeditions, considered one of the worst disasters in the history of Everest mountaineering. Notwithstanding controversy over his actions during that expedition, Lopsang was well-regarded in the mountaineering community, having summited Everest four times. Lopsang was killed in an avalanche in September 1996, while again on an expedition to climb Everest for what would have been a fifth ascent.
Sandra Hill is a socialite, mountaineer, author, and former fashion editor. She survived the 1996 Mount Everest disaster shortly after becoming the 34th woman to reach the Mount Everest summit and the second American woman to ascend all of the Seven Summits.
The May 1996 expedition by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police to reach the summit of Mount Everest happened in the background of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and resulted in three members of the expedition dying.
The 1996 South African Everest expedition was a heavily publicised expedition by a South African climbing team to summit Mount Everest. The expedition was led by Ian Woodall, and was intended to be a celebration of post-apartheid South Africa. Woodall and Cathy O'Dowd summited together. Bruce Herrod reached the summit afterward but died during his descent. Although the expedition was not caught up in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, it unfolded while the South African team was on the mountain.
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