Barbara Washburn

Barbara Washburn (November 10, 1914 – September 25, 2014) was an American mountaineer. She became the first woman to climb Denali (Mount McKinley) on June 6, 1947. She was the wife of mountaineer and scientist Bradford Washburn. Barbara died a few weeks short of her 100th birthday.

Born in the Boston area, Washburn met her husband while taking courses at Harvard University. They married in 1940 and honeymooned in Alaska making the first ascent of Mount Bertha together. The Washburns often worked in tandem areas of mountaineering, exploring, mapping, and museum administration. She did not realize that she had been the first woman to climb Denali until after their ascent,. She typically accompanied her husband on his expeditions, and contributed to his work at the Boston Museum of Science.

With her husband, she completed a large-scale map of the Grand Canyon, published as a National Geographic magazine supplement in July 1978. For that achievement and others, the Washburns received in 1980 the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the National Geographic Society. In 1981, the Washburns produced the most detailed and accurate map ever made of Mount Everest.

Barbara's memoir is The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley by Barbara Washburn, Lew Freedman, and Bradford Washburn, Epicenter Press, May 2001.

First woman to climb Denali (1947). Also a team member along with her husband Brad on several Alaskan first ascents including Mt Bertha (1940) and Mount Hayes (1941). Barbara wrote that prior to her marriage to Brad, "I had no mountaineering background". Despite this, Barbara led the ascent of the corniced north ridge section of Mt Hayes.

Other climbers have described this section of the traverse as "so narrow and the snow so soft that you could not put your feet side by side."

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