First to the Top: Cassidy Randall on the Women Who Rewrote Mountaineering History
In 1970, six women climbed Denali — the first all-women's expedition to summit any of the world's high peaks. They hauled wooden snowshoes up a mountain famous for 300-mile-an-hour winds, fought altitude sickness and each other, and pulled off one of the great survival stories in mountaineering history. Almost nobody noticed.
Cassidy Randall's debut book Thirty Below rescues that story from obscurity, weaving together journals, letters, and archives to bring these six complicated, extraordinary women fully to life. The book won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival — the Oscars of outdoor literature — and it's not hard to see why.
In this conversation, Cassidy and Stephen talk about what drew her to the story, the savage institutional sexism these women faced before they ever set foot on the mountain, the social dynamics that started unraveling at altitude, and why a story this remarkable stayed buried for over fifty years. They also get into the craft of writing narrative nonfiction, the editor-writer relationship, and what it means to write heroes who are selfish and brilliant and deeply human all at once.
Thirty Below is available now at Bookshop.org (https://bookshop.org/a/1358/9781419771538). Find more of Cassidy's work at cassidyrandall.com (https://www.cassidyrandall.com/).
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Inside a recent episode
First to the Top: Cassidy Randall on the Women Who Rewrote Mountaineering History
Published 17 Mar 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And Arlene had been part of this three person group. They were looking for a fourth, but she had started to put all the wheels in motion. The group falls apart. Arlene was the only woman. Group falls apart. And she sends this letter to Ben, like, it looks like I won't be making it to Denali. And Grace finds this letter. And the two of them start corresponding. And Grace has this idea. I want to leave this climb. Salt women's climb. Would you be interested? And then... What is also amazing and what I had access to is everything that is in Arlene's archive. So Arlene is still alive, which also is very helpful when you're doing a historical narrative. […]
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