Name Barbara Washburn | Role Mountaineer | |
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Died September 25, 2014, Lexington, Massachusetts, United States | ||
Women s history psa 28 of 30 roberta sheldon on mountaineers dora keen and barbara washburn 1987
Barbara Washburn (November 10, 1914 – September 25, 2014) was an American mountaineer. She became the first woman to climb Denali (Mount McKinley) on June 6, 1947. She was the wife of mountaineer and scientist Bradford Washburn. Barbara died a few weeks short of her 100th birthday.
Contents
- Women s history psa 28 of 30 roberta sheldon on mountaineers dora keen and barbara washburn 1987
- Barbara washburn talks mt mckinley
- Biography
- First Ascents
- References
Barbara washburn talks mt mckinley
Biography
Barbara Washburn, nee Polk, was born in the Boston area and graduated from Smith College. As a young woman, she took courses at Harvard University and worked as a secretary for the New England Museum of Natural History (now the Boston Museum of Science). There, she met her husband, Bradford Washburn , then the director of the museum. They married in 1940 and honeymooned in Alaska.
The Washburns often worked in tandem, in areas of mountaineering, exploring, mapping, and museum administration. She did not realize that she had been the first woman to climb Denali until after their ascent,. She typically accompanied her husband on his expeditions, and contributed to his work at the Boston Museum of Science.
With her husband, she completed a large-scale map of the Grand Canyon, published as a National Geographic magazine supplement in July 1978. For that achievement and others, the Washburns received in 1980 the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the National Geographic Society. In 1981, the Washburns produced the most detailed and accurate map ever made of Mount Everest.
Barbara's memoir is The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley by Barbara Washburn, Lew Freedman, and Bradford Washburn, Epicenter Press, May 2001.
First Ascents
Barbara was the first woman to climb Denali (1947). Other notable Alaskan first ascents included Mt Bertha (1940) and Mount Hayes (1941), which she completed alongside her husband and a team of other mountaineers. Barbara wrote that prior to her marriage to Brad, "I had no mountaineering background". Despite this, Barbara led the ascent of the corniced north ridge section of Mt Hayes, a section other climbers have described as "so narrow and the snow so soft that you could not put your feet side by side."
