Breaking Trail

In her memoir, Breaking Trail (2005), American mountaineer and environmental scientist Arlene Blum narrates how she overcame the low expectations of her family and institutional sexism to become a pioneering female mountaineer, best known for leading the all-women team which achieved the first American ascent of Annapurna (I). Blume also discusses her career as a scientist, her experience of motherhood, and her trekking expeditions through the Himalayas and the Alps.

The memoir opens with a climactic moment from early in Blum’s climbing career. At more than 20,000 ft, near the summit of Alaska’s Mount McKinley, Blum clings to the rock face. Above her, troubling storm clouds gather. Below her, her team leader is moaning: “I’m going to die.” Blum describes her terror and panic.

From here, the memoir moves back to a moment from Blum’s childhood. As she plays with a doll under the porch of her family home, Blum hears her aunt say, “That child will amount to no good.” Overcome with hatred and anger, Blum resolves there and then to “show them all.”



Throughout the memoir, the narrative of Blum’s life is interwoven with the story of her growth as a climber. We learn that she was born in Iowa and raised in Chicago by her Orthodox Jewish mother and grandparents. She would not meet her father until she was a teenager. Her mother suffered from depression, her grandmother had a difficult temperament, and her grandfather, though kindly, was limited in his ability to understand his young granddaughter. Her aunt’s dismissive remark was typical of the atmosphere in her home. However, Blum credits these early low expectations with incentivizing her to succeed.

Her introduction to climbing comes through a “handsome” classmate, John Hall, her chemistry lab partner at Reed College in Oregon. He invites her on her first mountain expedition to the summit of Mount Adams. At 10,000 feet, she is awestruck by the beauty of her surroundings, and she refuses to go back down with John, even though he warns her that she has already reached a high altitude for a first climb. She is mildly insulted to learn that John did not expect her to make the summit. She pushes on with the other climbers, not quite reaching the summit. With little light left, the team must make a rapid descent, and Blum severely cuts herself glissading down the slope. But she has found her calling. She throws herself into mountaineering. After college, she launches into an “endless winter,” traveling the world in search of peaks to climb.

Though she becomes a highly skilled climber, she is barred from taking on the most challenging peaks by the sexism of male mountaineers. She is rejected from an expedition to Afghanistan because her presence would spoil the “easy masculine companionship” of the climb. In 1970, her application to join an expedition is accepted, but she learns she is expected to stay at base camp to cook.



Meanwhile, Blum is also wrestling with the institutional sexism of the scientific establishment. To obtain her doctorate in biophysical chemistry, Blum combines her passions, climbing to the summits of volcanoes to study their chemistry. She forges a successful career as a scientist at a time when science is male dominated. Her research leads to a ban on a carcinogenic chemical that had previously been used in children’s clothing.

Blum’s first passion remains climbing, and she takes increased time away from the lab to pursue it. To overcome the discrimination of male mountaineers, Blum begins putting together all-female climbing expeditions. She organizes the first all-women climb of Mt McKinley in 1970. This is the expedition with which the memoir opened: Blum’s team reaches the summit and returns safely.

This expedition launches a sequence of challenging climbs. In 1976 Blum attempts to scale Everest, becoming the first American woman to do so, although she fails to reach the summit. In 1978, she organizes another all-women expedition, this time to climb Annapurna (I), the Himalayan peak that has claimed more lives than any other. During this climb (which Blum has described in her earlier memoir, Annapurna: A Woman’s Place), Blum and her team reach the summit. However, two members of another team in the same expedition, Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz and Vera Watson, die during the ascent.



Blum is tortured by guilt and self-doubt after these deaths, and this becomes a recurring theme as she continues to tackle dangerous climbs. A climbing partner plummets to his death in front of her. An entire team of eight women dies in the Pamir Mountains.

Meanwhile, despite her achievements as a climber, Blum continues to face casual sexism. She is denied entrance to the Harvard Mountaineering Club. Expedition leaders choose less experienced male climbers over her. A male climber tells her that there are no real women climbers, because “women either aren't good climbers or they aren't real women.”

However, as Blum ages, she begins to untangle the complex family history which partly drives her to these dangerous feats. She feels the need to prove herself less and less strongly. At the same time, she continues to mourn the deaths of her climbing friends and companions. When she becomes a mother in 1990, Blum quits high-altitude climbing for good.



Instead, Blum devotes herself to trekking—long-distance hikes at lower altitudes. She attempts what she calls the “Great Himalayan Traverse,” a 2000-mile journey from Bhutan to India across treacherous ground. She crosses the Alps with her baby on her back.

Blum’s memoir focuses on the difficulties faced by women in male-dominated fields, inspiring the reader with the sense that these difficulties can—and must—be overcome.