Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei

Junko Tabei was born in Miharu, a small town in Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, in 1939. An amazing mountaineer and lover of peaks, she founded the Ladies Climbing Club in 1969 and reached the summit of Everest on May 16, 1975, as leader of an all-women Japanese team. After Everest, Tabei devoted much of her adult life to climbing the world’s most renowned peaks, becoming the first woman in the world to scale the highest point on each of the seven continents, the Seven Summits.

As an educator and outdoor enthusiast, Tabei worked tirelessly to promote the importance of living a life connected to the natural world and to raise awareness regarding the degradation of Everest in an era when the legendary mountain is frequented by hundreds of would-be climbers every year.

In her later years and in spite of being diagnosed with cancer in 2012, Junko continued to climb and hike as often as possible, celebrating the 40th anniversary of her Everest success with a hiking trip to Tengboche, Nepal, in September 2015, and Japan’s Mount Fuji in July 2016, a climb in support of high school students affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated the area. Mount Fuji was the last summit that Junko reached. She passed away three months later, on October 20, 2016.

Honouring High Places is a collection of personal stories and reflections based on Tabei’s memoirs. Inspiring, thoughtful, honest. and poignant, this volume will serve as an enduring tribute to a remarkable mountaineer, passionate educator, and inspiring woman.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Boardman/Tasker Mountaineering Literature Award and Winner 2018 Banff Mountain Book Festival Mountaineering History Award.