Barbara Washburn

Known for

Acting

Born

November 10, 1914

Died

September 25, 1914

Barbara Washburn (née Polk) (November 10, 1914 – September 25, 2014) was an American mountaineer. She became the first woman to climb Denali (Mount McKinley) on June 6, 1947. She was the wife and climbing partner of mountaineer and scientist Bradford Washburn. Barbara Washburn, née Polk, grew up in the Boston-area suburb of West Roxbury, Massachusetts. She attended the Boston Girls Latin School and graduated from Smith College. As a young woman, she took courses at Harvard University and worked as a secretary for Bradford Washburn, then the director of the New England Museum of Natural History (now the Boston Museum of Science). When the Washburns announced their engagement, Barbara Washburn resigned from her job at the museum. They married on April 27, 1940, honeymooned in New Hampshire, then spent the summer on an Alaskan expedition. Shortly after marrying Bradford Washburn, Barbara Washburn was asked to accompany her husband and a team of six others on an expedition to attempt the first ascent of remote 10,182 ft (3,103 m) Mount Bertha, a mountain in the Fairweather range of Alaska, during the early summer of 1940. As the expedition's leader, Bradford Washburn envisioned a relatively casual affair. Besides Barbara Washburn, who had no mountaineering experience, a 16-year-old Lowell Thomas Jr. came along at the request of his father, Lowell Thomas. According to Bradford Washburn's later recounting, "His father figured that if Barbara was going it must be easy". Washburn wrote that prior to her marriage, "I had no mountaineering background". Once in Alaska, the team ferried heavy loads up through a series of camps along the flanks of the mountain. She recalled of that time, "I had no real feeling about being a pioneering woman on a serious Alaskan expedition. I only knew that as the only woman, I had to measure up." On the first attempt at the summit, the team climbed too slowly and had to turn back 1700ft from the top. On the way down, Bradford Washburn decided that they should rappel down an open crevasse to save time. According to Washburn, she learned to rappel on the fly with only brief instructions: "Now tie the rope around your waist....you just swing across this ice slope, and this is called rappelling."[10] For the second summit attempt, three team members, Lowell Thomas Jr., Alva Morrison and Lee Wilson, decided to remain in camp. The remaining five, Barbara and Bradford Washburn, with Maynard Miller, Michl Feuersinger and Thomas Winship, achieved the summit on July 30, 1940. In August, as they returned to Juneau, Alaska, Washburn felt that she was not recovering from the ordeal as quickly as the others and sought the advice of a doctor, only to learn that she was a few months pregnant. In 1941, fearing that war time activities would preclude further expedition opportunities, Bradford Washburn pushed for the couple to take on a new challenge. Mount Hayes, a 13,832 ft (4,216 m) peak in the Hayes Range of Alaska, had been subject to two previous attempts at the summit, one reaching 11,000 ft (3,400 m), but had not yet had a first ascent. Bradford Washburn later recalled it being one of the few expeditions the couple did with no additional angle, such as map-making or scientific discovery, but simply for the fun of it, in fear that the war would irrevocably alter their circumstances and prevent any future adventures...