Vera Komarkova, Mountaineer, Dies at 62
NY Times
Vera Komarkova, a botanist and mountain climber who was among the first women to scale some of the world’s highest peaks, died on May 25 in her home in Leysin, Switzerland. She was 62. The cause was complications of breast cancer, her family said.
In the fall of 1978 the American Women’s Himalayan Expedition left the United States for Annapurna in Nepal, the 10th highest mountain in the world. Dr. Komarkova and her climbing partner Irene Miller, now Beardsley, with the help of two Sherpa guides, became the first women and the first Americans to reach the summit.
“She was an incredibly strong, dedicated climber,” said Arlene Blum, who led the 10-woman expedition. “Vera was one of the strongest on our team.”
At the time, it was only the fourth expedition to reach the top, and Annapurna is now thought to be one of the most dangerous of the world’s 8,000-meter mountains, a class that includes Everest. Two other members of the team fell to their deaths in the attempt.
It was then generally believed that women were not physically and emotionally strong enough to endure such demanding climbs, and women had problems getting climbing permits or joining men’s teams, Ms. Blum and Ms. Beardsley said.
Most of the roughly $80,000 needed for their trip was raised by a T-shirt campaign with the slogan “A Woman’s Place Is on Top.”
In 1984, Dr. Komarkova led another successful Himalayan expedition, to Cho Oyu in Tibet, the world’s sixth highest peak. She and her partner were the first women to reach that summit, and it was her last major climb.
Vera Komarkova was born in Pisek, Czechoslovakia, in 1942. Her father was a scientist at Charles University in Prague, where she would earn a master’s degree in biology and chemistry in 1964. Throughout her youth, she climbed in Europe, scaling mountains in the Tatras, Carparthians, and the Alps.
Dr. Komarkova studied at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and earned a Ph.D. in biology in 1976. She later became an American citizen.
For her dissertation, Dr. Komarkova produced a detailed study of the alpine flora of the Niwot Range in the Colorado Rockies.
It was published as a two-volume book, “Alpine Vegetation of the Indian Peaks Area” (Cramer, Vaduz; 1979), and remains the definitive work on the subject, according to her adviser, Patrick Webber, now of Michigan State University.
