At the age of 77, the first woman to climb Mount Everest passes away.
Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in seven continents in the world surrendered to her illness, reports said.
According to Japanese media, the 77-year-old Tabei died in hospital outside Tokyo, Japan on Thursday after a battle with cancer.
She was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, but the diagnosis of the doctors did not stop her from mountaineering.
Tabei was a member of the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition in 1975 when she summited Everest, the world’s highest peak at 8,850 meters or equivalent to 29,035 feet.
She was 35 years old at the time of the said expedition.
In 1992, the Japanese climber conquered the so-called “Seven Summits” — becoming the first woman to scale the highest mountains on seven continents. The seven summits that Tabei has surpassed comprise Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Carstensz Pyramid, Vinson and Everest.
After this, she campaigned for better protection of mountain environments and continued mountaineering in her later years.
In an interview with the Japan Times in 2012, Tabei recalled the attitude of many people toward the all-female expedition to the Himalayas.
“Back in 1970s Japan, it was still widely considered that men were the ones to work outside and women would stay home,” said Tabei. During that time, the mountaineer left her 3-year-old daughter with her husband and relatives.
“There was never any question in my mind that I wanted to climb that mountain, no matter what other people said.”
Her milestones went even beyond Mount Everest.
According to Japan’s state broadcaster NHK, her last climb in July was a trek up the famed Mount Fuji with high school students from Japan’s northeast, an area still recovering from a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.