Top Women Mountain Climbers in The World

In honor of National Mountain Climbing Day, we are honoring a few badass women that take “goals” to a whole new height.  As if making it to the gym wasn’t hard enough for some of us – these women are climbing mountains around the world showing us that difficult doesn’t mean impossible. Before we list our favorite women climbers, here are some cool facts:

• In 1906, at age 47, Fanny Bullock Workman set a world climbing record for women of 22,815 feet when she reached the top of Pinnacle Peak in Nun Kun Massif in Kashmir.
• Annie Peck, an American schoolteacher, reached the 21,834-foot North Summit of Mt. Coropuna in Peru in 1911. The peak had never been scaled before. Peck was 58 years old at the time.
• Barbara Washburn became the first woman to climb the United States’ highest peak, Mt. McKinley, in 1947.

Junko Tabei

Junko Tabei was the Japanese alpinist who became the first woman to scale Mount Everest and to ascend the highest summit of every continent! She died a few years ago at the age 77  but her Everest climb was seen as a  milestone for women — both in a field dominated by men and in a society who believed women couldn’t do it.

Meagan Martin

This professional climber, American Ninja Warrior competitor,  There’s no obstacle course, route, or dyno that Meagan Martin won’t try (and, most likely, execute beautifully). When she isn’t competing or training herself, she’s working as a youth coach at ABC Kids Climbing Gym in Boulder, Colorado.

Margo Hayes 

At the ripe old age of 19, Margo Hayes became the first woman to send (climb and finish successfully) a 5.15a-rated route: “La Rambla,” located in the mountains of Siurana, Spain. She’s inspiring and will make us all feel like we should have been doing more by the age of 19.

Angela Van Wiemeersch

A competitive figure skater in her youth and now an ice climber with numerous first ascents under her belt, Van Wiemeersch is right at home in environments that make most of us want to hide at home.  Even looking at her Instagram will make you cold!  We will warn you, looking at her Instagram might inspire you to be a badass.

Maureen Beck

As if climbing is not hard enough – can you imagine doing it with one hand? Well, that’s not a barrier for Maureen Beck whose mission is to normalize climbers with disabilities as fellow athletes in the climbing community.  As a competitive climber, she has won four national titles, a gold medal at the 2014 Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain, and defended that title with a gold medal at the 2016 World Championships in Paris.