Junko Tabei

1939 - 2016

Born on September 22, 1939, in Miharu, Fukushima Japan, Junko Ishibashi was the fifth of seven children. Junko was the first woman to summit Mt. Everest and the Seven Summits.

Tabei fell in love with climbing at the age of ten when she went on a class trip to Mount Asahi and Mount Chausu in Japan. Later attending Showa Women’s University, Tabei was the only woman member of the climbing club. Many men even refused to climb alongside Tabei, claiming that she was just there to find herself a husband. These experiences led Tabei to form her climbing club for women in 1969. By 1972, she became a well-recognized mountaineer in her community. When the idea of Everest came to Tabei, she had to join the four-year waiting list with a couple of colleagues. The Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition was a group of 15 women with a diverse array of jobs. Many of the women had trouble financing the trip and had to make their gear. In the spring of 1975, Tabei made her Everest summit attempt when an unexpected avalanche hit and left her buried, unconscious under several feet of debris. Luckily, the team’s six Sherpas were able to pull her to safety with no fatal injuries. Determined to finish the expedition, Tabei summited Mt. Everest 12 days later on her hands and knees- making her the first woman in history to conquer the mountain. No one else in her group succeeded. Nearly two decades after her first serious climb, Tabei became the first woman to summit the Seven Summits in 1992.

In 2002, Tabei returned to school to study ecology and make her mark as a conservationist. She researched the environmental degradation caused by humans on Mount Everest and led the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, a group dedicated to protecting fragile high-altitude environments from man-made degradation. Ultimately, a diagnosis of cancer forced Tabei to stop climbing. She passed away in 2016, at the age of 77.