Notes

• "For most of the modern age "woman climber" has been an oxymoron. Women were almost without exception relegated to the role of wife, widow, prostitute, royalty or slave. But sometime during the late nineteenth century, when the first woman cinched a rope around her waist and lashed her boots into bear claw-shaped steel crampons to climb up ice walls and steep snow slopes, war was declared on the status quo. Boldest of the "warriors" were the first five women who climbed K2, one of the most remote and dangerous mountains on Earth."–BOOK JACKET