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In 1986, as part of a Canadian team, Sharon Wood became the first woman from the Americas to summit Mount Everest–and the first woman in the world to do so via the West Ridge from Tibet and without Sherpa support.
Often the only woman on expeditions, Wood was an outlier in a predominantly male bastion of high altitude alpine climbing. Her first full-length memoir, Rising (Douglas & McIntyre, October 2019), details the personal motivation that drove her to reach further and further heights: from gale-force Everest winds to midnight tent explosions and oxygen-starved plateaus. On Story Untold, the Canmore, Alberta-based Wood relives her ’86 Everest expedition and reflects on how her relationship with the world’s tallest mountain has changed thirty years later.
Bio excerpted from Douglas & McIntyre. Photo (right) from sharonwood.net. (Photo by Mikael Kjellstrom.)