Although Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, the Japanese mountaineer never felt comfortable with this distinction.
“I was the 36th person to climb Everest,” she told Sports Illustrated in 1996. She was also the first woman to overcome the Seven Summits and in 1992 reached the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. Although she was the first ever to reach Everest’s peak, it seems that Google Tabei is celebrating her 80th birthday on Sunday with an animated doodle.
Almost as long as Google exists, it has revived its pure search page with works of art that draw attention to notable people, events, holidays, and anniversaries. As a rule, the letters in his doodle were decorated with other objects that resemble the letter. This time around, however, the six letters in Google have been replaced by seven tips conquered by a comic version of Tabei.
Tabei was born in Miharu, Fukushima in 1939 and began climbing at the age of 10, although she was considered a frail child. In 1969, she founded a women’s climbing club after being badly treated by male mountaineers, some of whom refused to climb with her.
“Some thought I was there to meet men, but I just wanted to climb,” Tabei told SI.
The motto of the club was: “Let’s go on an overseas expedition alone.”
Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of Everest on May 16, 1975 at the age of 35.
In 1975 she resisted Japanese social norms again when she left her baby daughter with her husband while traveling to Nepal to lead a climbing group on Everest.
“In the 1970s, there was still a widespread belief in Japan that men work outside and women stay home,” Tabei told Japan Times 2012. “Women who had jobs – they were asked to serve only tea . “ It was therefore unthinkable for them to be promoted at their workplace.
“We were told we should raise children instead,” she said.
Her biggest hurdle on the way, however, came when she was held by an avalanche of four climbing attendants in her camp more than 20,000 feet up the mountain. She lost consciousness for about six minutes before her sherpa leaders pulled her at the ankles out of the snow.
“Once I knew everyone was alive, I was determined to continue,” she told SI. Their injuries prevented them from standing until two days after the avalanche, but 12 days after the disaster, Tabei would be the first woman standing on the highest peak on Earth.
She remained active in the climbing community for the rest of her life, focusing on the environmental damage that Everest suffers from cliff waste, and participated in many climbs aimed at eliminating this garbage.
Overall, Tabei climbed 69 major mountains in more than 60 countries and continued climbing after cancer was diagnosed in 2012. She died four years later, on October 20, 2016, at the age of 77.