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 and climbing partner of mountaineer and scientist Bradford Washburn. Early life Barbara Washburn, née Polk, grew up in the Boston-area suburb of West Roxbury, Massachusetts. She attended the Boston Girls Latin School and graduated from Smith College. As a young woman, she took courses at Harvard University and worked as a secretary for Bradford Washburn, then the director of the New England Museum of Natural History (now the Boston Museum of Science). When the Washburns announced their engagement, Barbara Washburn resigned from her job at the museum. They married on April 27, 1940, honeymooned in New Hampshire, then spent the summer on an Alaskan expedition. Mountaineering and first ascents Mount Bertha Shortly after marrying Bradford Washburn, Barbara Washburn was asked to accompany her husband and a team of six others on an expedition to attempt the first ascent of remote 10,182 ft Mount Bertha, a mountain in the Fairweather range of Alaska, during the early summer of 1940. As the expedition's leader, Bradford Washburn envisioned a relatively casual affair. Besides Barbara Washburn, who had no mountaineering experience, a 16-year-old Lowell Thomas Jr. came along at the request of his father, Lowell Thomas. According to Bradford Washburn's later recounting, "His father figured that if Barbara was going it must be easy".