Miriam O'Brien Underhill

Biographical Record & Archival Chronicle

Born on July 22, 1898, in Forest Hills, Massachusetts, Miriam O'Brien was educated at Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University. She began her mountaineering career in the White Mountains of New Hampshire before venturing to the European Alps in the 1920s, climbing with premier Chamonix and Valais guides. She soon observed that even when a woman had the skill to lead difficult rock pitches, conventional society and male companions assumed the male guide did all the work, reducing the woman to a passenger. Determined to achieve complete autonomy and self-reliance, O'Brien conceived the revolutionary ethic of manless climbing, organizing guideless ascents composed exclusively of women. In August 1929, climbing roped with French alpinist Alice Damesme, O'Brien completed the first all-female ascent of the notoriously technical Aiguille du Grépon in the Mont Blanc massif, an achievement that made global headlines and caused famed guide Étienne Couriche to lament that the Grépon was now a ladies' climb. In August 1932, O'Brien partnered with Micheline Morin to achieve the historic first all-female traverse of the Matterhorn, ascending from Switzerland via the Hörnli Ridge and descending into Italy. In 1932, she married fellow alpine pioneer Robert Underhill, a Harvard philosophy professor who had introduced modern European rope techniques to North America. Together, the Underhills traveled to Wyoming's Teton Range, where they made pioneering guideless ascents across the Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and the jagged spires of the Cathedral Group. Later settling in New Hampshire, she and her husband founded the Four Thousand Footer Club of the White Mountains, becoming the first climbers to complete winter ascents of all forty-eight peaks above 4,000 feet. She authored the classic mountaineering memoir Give Me the Hills in 1956. She passed away on January 7, 1976, at the age of seventy-seven.

Notable Milestones & Ascents

• Pioneered the philosophy and practice of 'manless climbing' (guideless, all-female technical mountaineering) in 1929
• Completed the first all-female ascent of the Aiguille du Grépon (Mont Blanc massif) on August 4, 1929, with Alice Damesme
• Achieved the first all-female traverse of the Matterhorn (4,478 m) on August 12, 1932, with Micheline Morin
• Pioneered numerous early guideless alpine ascents across the Grand Teton and Teton Range in the 1930s
• Co-founded the New England Four Thousand Footer Club, completing the first winter round of all 48 high peaks
• Authored Give Me the Hills (1956), an enduring literary classic of mountaineering literature