It wasn't until 1934 that another strong woman challenged the Karakoram. Hettie Dhyrenfurth of Switzerland, and her husband, Günter, led an expedition, complete with cinematographers, to the Baltoro Glacier, where six of the world's 14 8000-meter peaks are arranged within a 15-mile radius. The Dhyrenfurths, along with Albert Hocht, Hans Ertl, and their porter, Rodji, made the first ascent of the west peak of "Queen Mary" (24,370 feet), now known as the western summit of Sia Kangri, near the Siachen Glacier. Though the heavily glaciated peak was not particularly technical, it was a challenge nonetheless due to its high altitude and remote, unexplored locale.

Resistance and Breakthrough

Another 40 years passed before female mountaineers returned to the Karakoram, and then only in small numbers. This absence was due in part to the world-wide disruption caused by World War II and to the closure of the Baltoro region to all international climbers between 1961 and 1974, but also because of resistance from a male-dominated mountaineering community.

While not a Karakoram climb, the 1978 women's Annapurna expedition experienced a dramatic example of such chauvinism. When the women applied to the American Alpine Club (AAC) for approval to seek a climbing permit for Nepal (a necessary step at the time), the AAC board reluctantly gave it to them. In her book Annapurna: A Woman's Place, Arlene Blum, one of the expedition's organizers, recalls the board saying, "We've got to be more careful approving a women's expedition. There would be a lot of bad publicity if things didn't go well."

Despite such bureaucratic hurdles, the 1970s heralded the first wave of Karakoram expeditions to be led and organized by women, with significant numbers of female team members. After being summarily rejected by male organizers of Lhotse expedition, Wanda Rutkiewicz of Poland, undoubtedly the best high-altitude female mountaineer of all time (by dint of having summitted eight 8000-meter peaks), led an international group of 10 women and seven men on an expedition to Gasherbrum II and III in 1975.

On that groundbreaking trip, Rutkiewicz, Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz of Great Britain (who, along with American Vera Watson, died on Annapurna in 1978) and her Polish husband Janusz Onyszkiewicz, and Krystof Zdzitowiecki summitted Gasherbrum III (26,090 feet), at the time the highest unclimbed peak in the world. Two other members of the team, Anna Okopinka and Halina Kruger-Syrokomska, climbed the Austrian route on Gasherbrum II (26,360 feet), making the first all-female ascent of an 8000-meter peak. "Wanda was a huge influence to me," says American Christine Boskoff, owner of the Seattle-based Mountain Madness guide service and the only currently living woman to have climbed six 8000-meter peaks. "She played a huge part in establishing a place for women in the high-altitude mountaineering world. Unfortunately there really hasn't been anyone after her."

Despite the successes of Rutkiewicz's expedition, naysayers continued to downplay women's accomplishments, questioning whether the expedition could have managed without assistance from the team's male members, who fixed ropes for both of the women's summit teams. This attitude changed radically in the 1980s, when women broke further ground.