Oh my gosh, fellow history buffs,  clear your schedule – How To Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer is so much fun. This book is all about women who were explorers and adventurers, including early explorers such as Lady Hester Stanhope (1776 – 1839) and more modern women such as Jerri Nielsen (1952-2009).

The author, Mick Conefrey, never defines his terms, but he seems willing to include any women who did unusual things in unusual places, whether they were actively exploring, engaging in an unusual and dangerous sport like mountaineering or sailing around the world, or living in a highly unusual location for someone of their background (an Inuit woman living in the Arctic would not be listed as an adventurer, having been born and raised in that environment, but a woman from Victorian England visiting the Arctic would be listed as such).

In an earlier book, Conefrey wrote about male adventurers and tried to distill some universal life lessons from their experiences. Later he realized that almost everyone he wrote about in that book (The Adventurer’s Handbook) was male, not because he intended to exclude women but because he was “simply ignorant of the long history of female travelers and explorers.”

In How to Climb Mt. Blanc, he attempts to “redress the balance.” He was also curious about what, if any, general differences there are or were between male and female explorers. This question forms the framework of the book, which is more of a big picture look at female explorers than it is a set of biographies.

Here’s what you can expect to find in the book – lots and lots of anecdotes about women doing amazing things. Usually, instead of giving one person’s life story from start to finish, Conefrey uses one example from their life to address the topic he’s exploring. There are also sections of tips, usually re-printed from the explorer’s writings.

If you ever wondered how reindeer maggots taste (like shrimp, according to Agnes Dean Cameron, 1908) or how many pairs of paper panties to take with you when you sail around the world (one hundred, according to Naomi James, 1977) then this is the book for you. There are also helpful tips about what reading material to take. Pro tip – if, like Monica Jackson, you take a two-volume set of The Brothers Karamazov with you on a Himalayan trek in the 1950’s, don’t bring Vol. 1 and forget to bring Vol. 2.

The book is most successful when it comes to telling stories about women who often have not gotten much recognition. It’s least successful when it talks about the differences between men and women, partly because the author discovers that while there seem to be some general trends, there are so many exceptions that the general trends are largely meaningless. Some of the more glaring examples are that women have (and always have had) more trouble getting funding than men, and women are less likely to travel with a team (possibly because funding a team is even harder than funding a solo traveller). Women are much more likely to face sexual harassment, and in writing about their experiences they are more likely to play down physical suffering, whereas men sometimes seem to revel in what Conefrey calls “painography.”

In the epilogue, Conefrey says:

Women are better survivors – but try telling that to Joe Simpson or Ernest Shackleton.

Women are more interested in people than in places – but try telling that to Eric Newby or Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Women are less competitive than men – but try telling that to Wanda Rutkiewicz or Ellen MacArthur.

Women don’t like taking risks – but try telling that to Amelia Earhart or Rosita Forbes.

In the end, there are very few generalizations that cannot be contradicted, except to say that women explorers are far less well known than men.

 

Ultimately, this book doesn’t give a ton of details about any one person, but it sure is great Google fodder. Check out the life of Sarah Hobson, who traveled through Iran in 1967. She disguised herself as a boy. A friend advised her that if people asked about her not having facial hair, she should joke about being a ‘khajeh.’ Not until a great many people had a good laugh at her expense did she discover that the word means ‘eunuch.’

Then there’s the life of Dervla Murphy, who started taking her daughter, Rachel, on treks with her when Rachel was five.

One thing male and female explorers and adventurers have in common is amazing resilience. Maralyn Bailey was shipwrecked (a whale rammed their boat) and sailed on a lifeboat with her husband for 117 days. The Baileys passed the time by planning their next trip and a year after their rescue they were traveling again. This sort of, “Well, that trip was a disaster, let’s take another one,” attitude seems to be very common – and those who survived their travels at all had a marked tendency to live (and continue traveling) into a very old age. It’s pretty damned inspiring to read that Freya Stark “lived to 100 and was still travelling in her 90s.”

This is not, however, a preachy book. It’s just good, light entertainment that will launch a thousand hours of Googling and that reminds us that women have always been keeping up with men, even when nobody noticed.