Katherine Indermaur

“Honouring High Places”–the final book authored by Junko Tabei, who died in 2016 at age 77 and was the first woman to summit Chomolungma (Everest)–is now available and is a finalist for a Banff Book award. Alpinist Assistant Editor Katherine Indermaur writes of the book: “Though there are many lessons to take away from Tabei’s life, perhaps the most important is not just how and what she climbed, but also how and what she accomplished as a mountaineer when she wasn’t climbing….”

With Alpinist 63 and Part II of the Nanda Devi Mountain Profile now on newsstands, we bring you this interview with Suman Dubey, who became a member of the 1961 Indian expedition to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in India’s Garhwal Himalaya when he was an undergraduate student in Delhi. Nanda Devi is a sacred peak significant to locals for embodying Hindu Goddess Nanda, and a difficult one for mountaineers due to its being surrounded by a ring of high peaks that make up the Sanctuary’s border.

Jan Redford’s new memoir, “End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood,” takes the reader on her journey of rebelling against her family and society’s expectations, navigating relationships and loss on her own terms and pursuing the potential she knows she has despite obstacles. It’s the work of a vulnerable and hard-earned courage, open to trial and error on a climb as well as on the ground.

Katherine Indermaur considers her connection to alpine environments and the history represented by the lodgepole pine.