Author Description

One of the first women and first Americans to go mountaineering throughout the world, Betsy Cowles Partridge climbed extensively during the 1930s and 1940s in Colorado, the Tetons, the Santa Martas in Colombia, the Canadian Rockies, and the Swiss Alps. In addition to being a forerunner in making these trips, Cowles Partridge wrote extensively about her adventures and recorded them in beautiful black-and-white photographs. Her "trip of a lifetime" was the 1950 trek she and four men took to the Khumbu region of Nepal, home to Mount Everest. Betsy was the official photographer of the party, the first-ever Westerners to visit the area.