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 kilometres (400 mi) 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 on each of the seven traditional continents. On 30 April 1985, Richard Bass became the first climber to reach the summit of all seven.
Anatoli Nikolaevich Boukreev was a Soviet and Kazakh 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 8,000 m.
Scott Eugene Fischer was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He was renowned for ascending the world's highest mountains without 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.
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 Vinson Massif on December 29, 1993, and 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 book 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. There exist several theories regarding the body's identity; the most popular one claims the body belongs to Tsewang Paljor, an Indian member of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition (ITBP) who died as part of the 1996 climbing disaster on the mountain wearing green Koflach mountaineering boots. 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 – likely by the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which manages the north side of Everest.
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 23 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.
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 climb the Seven Summits.
Ang Dorje (Chhuldim) Sherpa is a Nepalese sherpa mountaineering guide, climber, and porter from Pangboche, Nepal, who has reached the summit of Mount Everest 23 times. He was the climbing Sirdar for Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants 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.
The 1996 Indo-Tibetan Border Police Expedition to Mount Everest in May 1996 was a climbing expedition mounted by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The first party of the season on the Northeast face, it fixed climbing ropes and broke trail for subsequent parties. Three members of the ITBP expedition continued on to the summit, none returned, adding three deaths to five among two commercial parties spread over the Southeast and Northeast routes up the mountain that became known as the 1996 Mount Everest climbing disaster.
Mount Everest in 2016 covers events about Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth located in Nepal and Chinese Tibet in Asia. It is a popular climbing destination for extreme high altitude climbers, with several hundred climbing each year despite various dangers.
The 1996 South African Everest expedition was a heavily publicised expedition by a UK-South African climbing team to summit Mount Everest.
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