The First Woman To Almost Make Everest History
Every Everest season seems to herald a fresh crop of record-breaking ascents and ever-more audacious feats of climbing. This year, Kami Rita Sherpa broke his own world record for the most Everest summits, scaling the world’s highest peak for his 32nd time; last year, British climber Kenton Cool notched his 19th Everest summit, more than any other non-Sherpa climber in history; and the year before, Nepali climber Phunjo Lama smashed the women’s speed record when she tapped the summit in just 14 hours and 31 minutes.
While success on Everest makes for splashy headlines and irresistible narratives of triumph, the ones who fall just short of summit glory—who almost made it, almost survived, almost changed history—help reshape not only the sport’s technical progression, but also the broader ethos of mountaineering.
Marty Hoey stands out as one of mountain climbing’s most edifying and tragic “almosts.” Born in 1951 in Washington state, Hoey began her career guiding in the Cascades. During this time, she logged more than 100 ascents of Mount Rainier and led expeditions up Denali, North America’s tallest peak. In the 1970s, the fledgling world of commercial high-altitude guiding was an overwhelmingly male-dominated space. Undeterred, Hoey muscled her way in with impeccable technical skills, a monastic sense of calm under pressure, and a preternatural mountain instinct.
In 1982, Hoey was selected to join an American-Chinese expedition up the north face of Mount Everest. If successful, it would have made Hoey the first woman to summit the world’s highest peak. On May 15, 1982, at roughly 26,000 feet, Hoey, along with teammate Jim Wickwire, was clipped to a fixed line while ascending to their next camp. As she leaned back to let Wickwire pass, a poorly secured buckle on her harness broke away from the fixed line. Hoey slipped out of her harness, trying in vain to grab for the rope, but it was too late. Without a sound, she slid over a mile down a 45-degree ice slope and into a deep crevasse. Her body was never recovered.
Hoey’s story goes to show that experience alone doesn’t guarantee success on the mountain and even the most technically flawless ascents can be upended by a single point of failure. Still, it would be reductive to hand wave Hoey’s story as just another tragic footnote in Everest history. It’s fair to say she died making a simple mistake, but it’s equally fair to say she upended the narrative about who mountaineering was for and paved the way for future women alpinists to point to Hoey and say, “If you think that was cool, watch this.”
—Ash Czarnota
