Congrats To Gerlinde

This is just a post--on Women's Equality Day in the U.S., a day that commemorates American women gaining the right to vote in 1920--to congratulate our Austrian sister and mountain climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner on becoming the 1st woman to climb the world's 14 highest peaks without artificial oxygen. Kaltenbrunner achieved this feat just this Tuesday, August 23, 2011, when she and her team reached the summit of K2 in Pakistan. The National Geographic has this article with great pictures and daily dispatches recording Kaltenbrunner's team's bid for the summit. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

4th Update—6:18 p.m. Kyrgysistan Time (8:18 a.m. EDT): Gerlinde stands on the summit of K2 as the eleventh person and first woman in the world to successfully climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without the use of bottled oxygen. She reports that the view is incredible and the sun is out.

For anyone interested in more background and history on women mountain climbers, a book I recommend is Savage Summit  by Jennifer Jordan. Jordan's book details the lives and careers of the first 5 women to make the summit of K2. It's a bit overwritten and unnecessarily melodramatic in parts, but it's still fascinating to read about these women's particular challenges in the male-dominated world of mountaineering. And for fans of Jon Krakauer's best-seller Into Thin Air, Jordan's book should prove interesting as a counterpoint to some of the claims made by Krakauer and the media about female socialite and climber Sandy Hill Pittman's role in the disastrous climbing season of 1996 on Mt. Everest, which saw 9 lives lost.

Thankfully, we now have the reports from Kaltenbrunner's successful 14-peak bid to add to women's mountaineering history. Congratulations to Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and her team!! Well done!