Aug 20, 2026 · 25 min · 17 segments
In 1975, Junko Tabei was part of an all-female, all-Japanese team climbing the world's highest mountain. It was touch and go there for a while, but she made: the first woman at the summit of Everest…
The air pressure up there is about one-third of what most of us are used to.
The human body cannot remain indefinitely above 19,000 feet.
Many people are seriously suffering long before that, and most Everest climbers use bottled oxygen to make it possible.
The first person credited with making it to the top was Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand in 1953.
The Sherpa people have traditionally lived on Everest, but not at the very top, obviously.
My immediate question is how do we know that no Sherpa ever made it to the top before Hillary? And the answer is we don't, really.
But there's no documented proof, nor would there be much incentive for them to do something so dangerous, so expensive, and so time-consuming.
It takes a specific cultural and financial mindset to think that would be fun.
Hillary was followed by a number of other mountaineers, some of whom succeeded, many of whom failed, and a fair percentage of whom died.
It was not for the timid or the sedentary.
One country that blossomed with mountaineers was Japan.
Traditionally, the Japanese climbed mountains for religious reasons.
In Japan, to climb the mountain was a form of worship.
It was not for fun or for sport.
But Westerners introduced new reasons for climbing mountains during the Meiji period, and the idea got much stronger after World War II.
The air pressure up there is about one-third of what most of us are used to.
The human body cannot remain indefinitely above 19,000 feet.
Many people are seriously suffering long before that, and most Everest climbers use bottled oxygen to make it possible.
The first person credited with making it to the top was Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand in 1953.
The Sherpa people have traditionally lived on Everest, but not at the very top, obviously.
My immediate question is how do we know that no Sherpa ever made it to the top before Hillary? And the answer is we don't, really.
But there's no documented proof, nor would there be much incentive for them to do something so dangerous, so expensive, and so time-consuming.
It takes a specific cultural and financial mindset to think that would be fun.
Hillary was followed by a number of other mountaineers, some of whom succeeded, many of whom failed, and a fair percentage of whom died.
It was not for the timid or the sedentary.
One country that blossomed with mountaineers was Japan.
Traditionally, the Japanese climbed mountains for religious reasons.
In Japan, to climb the mountain was a form of worship.
It was not for fun or for sport.
But Westerners introduced new reasons for climbing mountains during the Meiji period, and the idea got much stronger after World War II.
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