![\"Junko](\"https:\/\/abenteuer-berg.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Junko_Tabei_Everest_Gipfel-1.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cI can\u2019t understand why men make all this fuss about Everest \u2013 it\u2019s only a mountain,\u201d Jun<\/a>k<\/a>o Tabei<\/a> once said. Fifty years ago today, on 16 May 1975 at 12.30 p.m. local time, the Japanese woman became the first woman to reach the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters. She was accompanied by Ang Tshering Sherpa (1949-2012), both using bottled oxygen. It was around two decades before commercial mountaineering on Mount Everest as we know it today took off.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not want to climb a single step. Never again,\u201d Junko later said about the moment she reached the summit with Ang Tshering. They stayed at the top for 50 minutes, then set off on their descent. Back home in Japan, Tabei was later celebrated as a hero, which she could do little with<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019ve only done what I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A teacher awakened Junko\u2019s love of the mountains. She took the then ten-year-old with her to the 1,916-meter-high Nasu-dake<\/a> volcano. When Tabei wanted to join a mountaineering group in her early 20s, she clearly felt the reservations of the exclusively male members. Nobody wanted to climb with the petite Junko, who was only 1.52 meters tall. In 1969, she had had enough and founded the Ladies Climbing Club Japan (LCC). Their goal: \u201cLet us go on an overseas expedition by ourselves!\u201d<\/p>\n One year later, the time had come. In May 1970, Tabei \u2013 with her female compatriot Hiroko Hirakawa and the Nepalese Pasang Nima Sherpa and Girmi Tenzing Sherpa \u2013 scaled the 7,555-meter-high Annapurna III. It was only the second summit success on this mountain in western Nepal after the first ascent in 1961.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to come again to Nepal on higher peak, 8000m peak \u2013 Everest even,\u201d Junko subsequently wrote in her report for Elizabeth Hawley<\/a>, founder of the mountaineering chronicle Himalayan Database<\/a>. At that time, the Nepalese government only issued climbing permits for one Everest expedition per season. The LCC applied for spring 1975 and got the permit.<\/p>\n When Junko Tabei traveled to Nepal in 1975, she was already the mother of a three-year-old daughter (she later had another son). The Japanese group consisted of 15 women. The expedition was sponsored by a Japanese television station and a newspaper. The United Nations had proclaimed 1975 the \u201cInternational Year of Women\u201d, so the women\u2019s expedition fitted in well. It almost ended in disaster.<\/p>\n On 4 May, the Japanese women\u2019s high camp at 6,300 meters above the Khumbu Icefall was hit by an avalanche. \u201cNow it\u2019s over, now I have to die,\u201d Tabei later recalled<\/a> what she had thought at that moment. She could barely breathe and lost consciousness for a few minutes. The Sherpas eventually managed to free all the team members from the masses of snow.<\/p>\n Twelve days later, the then 35-year-old Junko Tabei stood on the world\u2019s highest peak. In 1992, she also became the first woman to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on all continents. In 1996, the Japanese summited her second eight-thousander, the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu \u2013 without bottled oxygen. In 2016, this pioneer of women\u2019s mountaineering died of cancer<\/a> at the age of 77.<\/p>\n Before the start of the current spring season on Mount Everest, 870 women had scaled the highest of all mountains. Junko Tabei was the first.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nClimbing ladies<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Rescued from an avalanche<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Died of cancer<\/h2>\n
<\/a>