Junko Tabei, world’s 1st woman to scale Mt. Everest, dies at 77

Japanese alpinist Junko Tabei, the first woman in the world to scale the peak of Mt. Everest, died of peritoneal cancer at a hospital in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, on Thursday. She was 77.

Tabei, who began mountain climbing in earnest after graduating from Showa Women’s University in Tokyo in 1962, became the first Japanese woman to reach the peak of 7,555-meter Annapurna III in the Himalayas, in 1970.

She then conquered 8,848-meter Everest, the highest peak in the world, in 1975 as vice captain of the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition and leader of its climbing party.

By 1992, Tabei scaled all of the world’s so-called seven summits, including Everest, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and McKinley, currently called Denali, in Alaska, the first such achievement by a woman.

Source: The Japan News.com