23/07/2026
When Wanda Rutkiewicz was climbing the highest mountains on Earth, technical clothing made for women was a rarity. High performance women's-specific jackets and base layers were few and far between, and equipment shaped for a woman's body (boots for a woman's foot, a pack built for a woman's back, or a harness with female proportions in mind) was practically non-existent. More often than not she took on the world's most challenging peaks in gear designed for men's bodies - and succeeded on those mountains anyway.
Wanda grew up in Poland, but she didn't always dream of summits. She was an athlete first, good enough at volleyball to play at national level, and she trained as a computer engineer in an era when very few women did either of those things. She only found her passion for the mountains at university. Within a decade she was one of the best high-altitude climbers alive, man or woman.
In 1982, Wanda led an all-female expedition to attempt to be the first women to climb K2. During preparations she broke her leg badly on Mt Elbrus, when another climber slipped and crashed into her. Most people would have found the long recovery hard enough, but Wanda hauled herself the entire 100km-plus walk-in to K2 base camp (eleven days, up to 5,000m) on crutches, splinted and running on painkillers, just to be with her expedition team.
They weren't successful that time - but four years later, on 23 June 1986 Wanda became the first woman to summit K2 and survive, and she did it without supplemental oxygen. She stood on top during the mountain's deadliest season on record, when thirteen climbers never came home, including Frenchwoman Liliane Barrard who summited the same day as Wanda.
Despite being told, on repeat, that the routes were too hard, the conditions too serious, the sport too dangerous for women, Wanda led the first all-female ascent of Nanga Parbat — no oxygen, no high-altitude porters. A decade before that, she'd led a team of women up Gasherbrum III at 7,952m: still one of the highest first ascents ever made by women.
Wanda called her mission to climb all fourteen 8,000m peaks her "caravan of dreams." She reached eight summits. In 1992, aged 49, she disappeared high on Kangchenjunga, on what would have been her ninth. Her body was never found.
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📷 Archivo Rutkiewicz
