In 1865, according to Charles Dickens no less, mountains were a Man’s World, solely populated by the Alpine Club’s all-male members, ‘scientific men’ and ‘human donkeys’ (male porters and guides). It was a view that prevailed for well over a century. In 1969, when American climber Arlene Blum applied to join an expedition in Afghanistan, its male organisers rejected her on the basis that a woman’s presence was ‘unpleasant’ amid ‘the easy masculine companionship which is so vital a part of the joy of an expedition.’ (The following year, Blum was permitted to join a high-altitude expedition as far as base camp, if she’d ‘help with the cooking’.)
Though women have been deliberately excluded from much of the history of mountaineering, we mustn’t be fooled into believing that, as one scholar…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2024