Lydia Pounamu Bradey ONZM (born 9 October 1961) is a New Zealand mountaineer. She became the first woman to summit Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1988. [1] She has climbed Mount Everest a total of six times. [2] [3] [4]
Lydia Pounamu Bradey ONZM (born 9 October 1961) is a New Zealand mountaineer. She became the first woman to summit Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1988. [1] She has climbed Mount Everest a total of six times. [2] [3] [4]
Lydia Bradey was born to Royce and John Bradey in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her father was absent for most of her childhood, and she and her mother struggled financially. [5] Bradey took up mountain climbing as a teenager; she went on her first wilderness expedition at the age of 14, and by 17 she had climbed to the summits of Mount Cook and Mount Aspiring. [6] During this time she regularly climbed with her friend Rob Hall, and later met his friend Gary Ball. [5] When she was 19, Bradey left New Zealand for a four-year international climbing trip, which included an attempt on Denali in Alaska and ten ascents of Yosemite's big walls, seven of which were the first ascents by a female. [5] [6]
In 1987, Bradey reached the summit of Gasherbrum II, thereby becoming the first Australasian woman to climb one of the world's fourteen 8,000 metre peaks. [6] The climb proved controversial since Bradey was climbing on a permit for the adjacent Gasherbrum I (a peak she had abandoned in favour of Gasherbrum II due to bad weather), making her ascent illegal. [5] In October 1988, Bradey successfully solo climbed Mount Everest, making her the first female to reach the summit without supplemental oxygen, as well as the first New Zealand female and the youngest New Zealander at the time. [7] This ascent, like the previous year on Gasherbrum II, broke rules agreed with the Nepalese. Bradey did not have a permit for the route she climbed, and to avoid being banned from the mountain, her teammates Rob Hall and Gary Ball said she had not reached the summit. When the Nepalese government threatened Bradey with a 10-year climbing ban, she too retracted her claim of a successful ascent, only to reassert her claim to the summit later. [7]
In 1994, Bradey graduated from the University of Auckland with a degree in physiotherapy. She completed a certificate of acupuncture in 1998 and became an International Mountain & Ski Guide (IFMGA) in 2000. [8] Since then she has worked as an alpine guide based in Wānaka. [9] Bradey made her second summit climb of Mount Everest in May 2008, twenty years after her first ascent. She climbed as a guide for a group of clients under the outfitter Adventure Consultants (AC). [9] In 2013, 2016 and 2018 Bradey made her third to fifth ascents of Everest, again as an AC guide; in 2019 she guided Everest for the sixth time, from Tibet, China for an American company Alpenglow Expeditions. [3]
In the 2020 New Year Honours, Bradey was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to mountaineering. [10]
Bradey lives in Lake Hāwea, Otago with her partner Dean Staples. [11] Bradey was the subject of a biography, Lydia Bradey: Going Up is Easy, by Laurence Fearnley. [12]
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.
Reinhold Andreas Messner is an Italian climber, explorer, and author from the German-speaking province of South Tyrol. He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds and also crossed the Gobi Desert alone. He is widely considered to be the greatest mountaineer of all time.
Cho Oyu is the sixth-highest mountain in the world at 8,188 metres (26,864 ft) above sea level. Cho Oyu means "Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan. The mountain is the westernmost major peak of the Khumbu sub-section of the Mahalangur Himalaya 20 km west of Mount Everest. The mountain stands on the China–Nepal border, between the Tibet Autonomous Region and Koshi Province.
The eight-thousanders are the 14 mountains recognized by the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) as being more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and sufficiently independent of neighbouring peaks. There is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and at times, the UIAA has considered whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountain peaks by including the major satellite peaks of eight-thousanders. All of the eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits lie in an altitude known as the death zone.
Gasherbrum II ; surveyed as K4, is the 13th highest mountain in the world at 8,035 metres (26,362 ft) above sea level. It is the third-highest peak of the Gasherbrum massif, and is located in the Karakoram, on the border between Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan and Xinjiang, China. The mountain was first climbed on July 7, 1956, by an Austrian expedition which included Fritz Moravec, Josef Larch, and Hans Willenpart.
Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, which he did on 30 May 2005.
Edmund Viesturs is an American high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He was the first American to climb all 14 of the eight-thousander mountains, and the 5th person to do so without supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted eight-thousanders on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times.
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.
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.
Nives Meroi is an Italian mountaineer and a climbing writer. On 11 May 2017 she completed the ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders using the alpine style of climbing and without supplementary oxygen.
Andrew James Lock OAM is an Australian mountaineer. He became the first, and still remains the only, Australian to climb all 14 "eight-thousanders" on 2 October 2009, and is the 18th person to ever complete this feat. He climbed 13 of the 14 without bottled oxygen, only using it on Mount Everest, which he has summited three times. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
Carlos Carsolio Larrea is a Mexican mountain climber. Carsolio is known for being the fourth man and the second youngest to climb the world's 14 eight-thousander mountains, all of them without supplementary oxygen.
Ralf Dujmovits is a German mountaineer. In May 2009 he became the 16th person, and the first German, to climb the 14 eight-thousanders.
Martin Walter Schmidt, known as Marty, was a New Zealand-American mountaineer, guide and adventurer.
Adventure Consultants, formerly Hall and Ball Adventure Consultants, is a New Zealand-based adventure company that brings trekking and climbing groups to various locations. Founded by Rob Hall and Gary Ball in 1991, it is known for its pioneering role in the commercialisation of Mount Everest and the 1996 Mount Everest climb during which eight people died, including Hall, a guide, and two Adventure Consultant clients.
Laurence Fearnley is a New Zealand short-story writer, novelist and non-fiction writer. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards, both in New Zealand and overseas, including The Hut Builder, which won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. She has also been the recipient of a number of writing awards and residencies including the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Janet Frame Memorial Award and the Artists to Antarctica Programme.
Nirmal Purja is a Nepal-born naturalised British mountaineer. Prior to taking on a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas followed by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy. Purja is notable for having climbed all 14 eight-thousanders in a time of six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen. This was a record at the time of climbing, although it was broken in 2023 by Kristin Harila and Tenjen Sherpa, who summitted all 14 eight-thousanders in 92 days. Purja was the first person to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, Purja, along with a team of nine other Nepalese climbers, completed the first winter ascent of K2.
Kristin Harila is a Norwegian-Northern Saami mountaineer and former cross-country skier. During 2022–2023, she set multiple speed records for the ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders, which are the peaks in the world that are over 8,000 metres in elevation.
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