Mountain climbing has always been a rigorous activity, even without today’s high-tech gear. So imagine how rare it was when Annie Smith Peck climbed Mount Shasta in California in 1888. Peck became interested in mountain climbing when she first saw the Swiss Alps. Once she made that first climb in California and saw the marvelous panorama from the top, she was hooked for life.
Always a nonconformist, Peck refused to let the days’ common prejudices against women keep her from her lofty goals. Born in 1850, she graduated from the University of
Michigan with honors. Pursuing her interest in Greek and the Classics, she subsequently went on to study at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, and was the school’s first female student. She worked as a teacher, writer, and scholar, but it is as a mountain climber that posterity remembers her.
When she climbed Mount Orizaba in Mexico in 1897, Annie Smith Peck became the first woman in the Americas to climb a mountain over 18,000 feet high. By 1900, she had climbed twenty major mountains. Eight years later, she became the first person, man or woman, to climb the north peak of Mount Huarascan in Peru. Its summit, at 21,812 feet, marked the highest point ever reached in the Western Hemisphere. As a consequence of her accomplishments, the north peak of the mountain was renamed in her honor: Cumbre Aña Smith.
This spirited woman never let age hold her back. At sixty-one, Peck became the first person to climb Peru’s Mount Coropuna. At the top she planted a flag that said, “Votes for Women.” Peck climbed her last mountain in New Hampshire when she was eighty-two. Her death three years later marked the end of a long and remarkable life.