Anna Czerwińska
Anna Czerwińska (10 July 1949 – 31 January 2023)[1] was a Polish climber. She is known for being the oldest woman to summit Mount Everest (at the time) at the age of 50. She also published several books about mountaineering.
Climbing career
Czerwińska was born in Warsaw, and was the first Polish woman to reach the Seven Summits. She was D.S. (Pharmacy) but she left medicine science to become a mountain climber, and was later a businesswoman as the owner of a purchasing firm. She climbed for 33 years, usually in all-women teams. In summer 1977 she climbed the North Face of the Matterhorn with Krystyna Palmowska. This was the first time that women had climbed such a difficult wall.
In Winter 1978 she climbed the north face of the Matterhorn with Krystyna Palmowska, Wanda Rutkiewicz, and Irena Kesa Czerwińska. Again they were the first women to succeed and it created a sensation in the European mountaineering world. Czerwińska was a member of the Polish Gasherbrums Expedition in 1975, and in 1979 she climbed a new route, Rakaposhi (7788 m), in Pakistan with Krystyna Palmowska. On 30 June 1983 they both climbed Broad Peak, Rocky Summit - Czerwińska, Main, Snowy Summit 8047 meters - Palmowska). Czerwińska tried to reach the top of K2 in 1982, 1984, and 1986, the last time being a witness to tragedy when 13 climbers died on the mountain. On 15 July 1985, she was on the summit of Nanga Parbat with Wanda Rutkiewicz and Krystyna Palmowska, the first all-woman team to reach the top without the support of men. She tried two times to climb Kanchenjunga, in 1980 and in 1990 as a leader of the expedition.
Czerwińska led the Makalu Expedition in 1988 and was also a member of the Makalu Expedition in the winter of 1990. For five years she “collected” the highest summits of the continents: Aconcagua (South America) and Kilimanjaro (Africa) in 1995, Mount McKinley (North America), Elbrus (Europe) and Mount Kosciuszko (Australia) in 1996, Mount Vinson (Antarctica) in 1998, Carstensz Pyramid (Australia with Oceania) in 1999, and Mount Everest (Asia) on 22 May 2000. On 6 June 2000, she climbed Shishapangma. She authored or coauthored many books about climbing on Matterhorn, Gasherbrum, Broad Peak, Nanga Parbat, and K2. She was, at the time, the oldest woman to summit Mount Everest. On 21 May 2001, Czerwińska summitted Lhotse, then known as Cho Oyu, on 25 September 2001.
Notable mountains climbed
List of eight-thousander mountains climbed:
- 1983 - Broad Peak-Rocky Summit (not considered as independent[2] eight-thousander)
- 1985 - Nanga Parbat
- 1986 - K2 (to the altitude of 8200 m)
- 2000 - Mount Everest
- 2000 - Shisha Pangma (Central-Peak)
- 2001 - Lhotse
- 2001 - Cho Oyu
- 2003 - Gasherbrum II
- 2006 - Makalu
References
- Zmarła Anna Czerwińska, wybitna himalaistka (in Polish)
- In making any "highest mountains" list, one needs to use a criterion to exclude subpeaks and only list independent mountains. There is no universally agreed-upon such criterion. However the (generally accepted) list of fourteen eight-thousanders is obtained if one uses a topographic prominence cutoff of between 200 and 500 metres (610 and 1524 feet). Some eight-thousand metre subpeaks have been climbed as goals in themselves, for example Lhotse Middle, but this is quite rare.
External links
- Anna Czerwinska the famous Polish climber(in English and Polish)