Alison
Hargreaves was a British mountain climber. She was born in on February 17,
1962. She was one of the greatest mountain climbers in the world. In 1993
she became the first climber of any gender to solo (climb alone) the six
classic
north faces of the Alps in a single season, which are:
Eiger (1938 route)
Grandes Jorasses (Walker Spur route)
Matterhorn (Schmid route)
Drus (standard north face route)
Piz Baile (Cassin route)
Cima Grande di Lavaredo (Hasse-Brandler route)
Two years later she made history by being the first women and the second person to reach the top of Mount Everest without a climbing partner.
By the time she was six she was enjoying climbing the hills of England and Scotland with her family. When she was nine, she climbed the highest mountain in Britain. She fell in love with climbing and wanted to do it all the time. She met an amateur climber named Jim Ballard, who was twice her age, while she was working in a climb shop and they fell in love. They married in 1988 and had two children, Tom and Kate.
Alison made her first attempt on Mt. Everest in 1994. She decided to stop climbing because she was worried about frostbite. The ends of her fingers were numb and she had lost all feeling in her toes. She was only 1,500 feet from the summit when she decided to stop climbing. On May 13, 1995, on her second attempt to climb Mt. Everest, she made it and got to the summit of the 29,028 feet mountain. Alison had become a national hero in England.
She quickly made plans to climb the mountain K2, in Pakistan, the second highest in the world. In 1995 she sent a drawing of the mountain to her children from the base camp at K2. Then she started to get frustrated. She missed good weather for the climb. She reached the summit of K2 on August 13, 1995. It was a beautiful clear, sunny day.
Alison never made it down from K2. A horrible storm moved in and she was lost in the storm. Her body was never found. Her death was talked about all around the world. She was an amazing woman who made history.
Hargreaves was the first women to climb both of the world’s highest mountains, Mount Everest and K2. Her favorite saying was, "One day as a tiger is better than a thousand days as a sheep."
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