Wanda Rutkiewicz, a Polish mountaineer born in Lithuania’s Plungė, was the third woman to climb the Everest and the first to stand on K2, the second-highest peak. In the end, she set herself a goal that, according to her colleagues, led her to her death.
The foundations of the house that belonged to musician Jonas Petkūnas can still be found on the street in Plungė named after Wanda Rutkiewicz. Petkūnas’ daughter Marija and her husband Zbigniew Błaszkiewicz moved into this house in 1941. The couple met in Kaunas, where Marija studied ancient history, and Zbigniew, an engineer, came to escape the war when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded his native Poland in 1939.
In the same house on February 4, 1943, Marija gave birth to their second child, a girl named Wanda. The parents spoke both Lithuanian and Polish but taught their children only Polish, said Wanda’s cousin Eugenija Murauskienė. “They used to speak Lithuanian among themselves when they didn’t want the children to understand,” Wanda told Eugenija.
In 1946, when Wanda was three years old, the family moved to Poland to her dad’s birthplace Łańcut, where they hoped to live more freely than in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Soon, they moved to Wrocław, where Wanda spent her childhood.
Growing up in Poland, Wanda often saw mountains and rocks, where her dad organised family picnics. But the young woman only discovered the joy of climbing when she was already studying at the Wrocław University of Technology. She was once invited by her friends to go to the cliffs and see how they climbed them. While there, Wanda did not want to just sit and watch, so she decided to also start climbing.
After this trip, Wanda felt like “something exploded inside her”, according to a biographer of mountaineers, Krystyna Pietrusewicz. Since then, Wanda started climbing rocks almost every weekend. Years later, she told Bogdan, the friend who first invited her to the rock, “You know, Bogdan, it’s all because of you – if you hadn’t taken me then, my life may have taken a different turn”.
First expeditions
In 1970, shortly after marrying a mathematician Wojciech Rutkiewicz, Wanda joined an expedition to the Pamir Mountains with climbers from Poland and Novosibirsk. They climbed a mountain, which was then named after Lenin. Although Wanda reached her first summit of over 7,000 metres, the expedition was not pleasant. The mountaineer found it difficult to get along with the other members of the expedition, who were all men.
After this trip, Wanda started dreaming about an all-female expedition. Her dream came true in 1975 when she led the women’s expedition to Gasherbrum, which turned out to be a success.
Over the next several years, Wanda went to the Himalayas several times and unsuccessfully tried to reach its peaks. After one expedition, she contracted meningitis and had to relearn how to walk and talk.
Thanks to these extreme expeditions, Wanda became known as one of the strongest mountaineers in Europe. In 1978, she was invited by German climber Karl Herrligkoffer to join an international expedition to Everest.
Wanda, again, did not get along with the male members of the expedition. Eventually, she had to reach the summit alone and without the oxygen mask, the tube of which got clogged with ice along the way.
As such, on October 16, 1978, Wanda became the third woman in the world and the first European woman to reach the summit of Everest. On the same day, Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II. When he met Wanda later, he said, “God wanted us to rise so high and to do it on the same day.”
This coincidence made the Poles even more interested in Wanda. After her return from Everest, she was giving interviews almost every day.
At the time, she was working at the Institute of Mathematics as a computer engineer. However, Wanda was more often in the mountains than at work. The woman divorced her first husband because he wanted to start a family, and she wanted to spend more time in the mountains.
A climber on crutches
After the expedition to Everest, Wanda once again became convinced that she was being treated differently because of her gender and decided to organise more expeditions for women. Soon, she received permission for such a trip to K2, the world’s second-highest peak, which is considered one of the most difficult to climb.
In 1981, the women trained in the Caucasus, where, despite bad weather conditions, they reached the summit of Elbrus. On the descent, Wanda went first. Suddenly, she felt a strong blow to her back – one of the climbers slipped and hit Wanda. She broke her femur. Wanda went to have surgery with a doctor she knew in Austria. A few months later, they got married.
Despite everything, Wanda continued to organise the K2 expedition. Eventually, 12 of the strongest female climbers, including Wanda on crutches, set off for K2. Many said it was impossible, but Wanda was fascinated by the idea of doing something that others considered unattainable.
During the expedition, Wanda took painkillers and cried but kept walking and reached the base at the altitude of 5,400 metres. Two female climbers, Halina and Anna, were at the base higher up. Halina suddenly lost consciousness. Anna and the other climbers tried to save her life, but it was too late.
Mountaineers from another expedition helped carry Halina’s body down and bury her.
After her death, the team decided to continue the expedition because they thought that “Halina would have wanted that”. Nevertheless, they failed to reach the summit of K2 because of the bad weather conditions.
Dying friends
Wanda and three other female climbers returned to K2 a few years later. Once again, weather conditions prevented them from reaching the world’s second-highest peak. But in the same year, Wanda climbed Aconcagua, the highest peak in South America, and Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, her second summit above 8,000 metres.
In 1986, Wanda returned to K2 for the third time. Austrian television ORF offered to finance a film about her trip to K2. With the money, she bought a place on a French expedition to the summit.
Before the final stretch to the summit, fellow French climbers, Liliane and Maurice Barrard, decided to spend a few more days at the base below, so Wanda went out alone. The weather that day was perfect. Wanda felt very well. As such, she became the first woman in the world to climb K2.
On the way down, she met Liliane and Maurice and climbed with them again. She was the first to go down. After descending a few hundred metres, she waited for her friends at the camp. It had started to snow, and they were nowhere to be seen. Wanda went up with the Italians from the other expedition to look for her teammates. Finally, Wanda decided to return to the base because she could no longer stay at that altitude. Maurice and Liliane never showed up.
Like many mountaineers, Wanda was constantly asked why she was returning to the mountains when so many of her friends died there. “As selfish as it is, it wasn’t my death. I keep on living,” Wanda said.
In the 1980s, Wanda quit her job at the Institute of Mathematics and started living off donations, also writing books, making films, and giving lectures in Poland and abroad. In 1988, together with Jerzy Kukuczka, they gave a lecture in Vilnius about their expeditions.
Ambitious goal
Wanda’s friends said that she looked hopeless in the city. But in the mountains, she was different – uncompromising, rejecting anything that contradicted her goals. Many mountaineers called her selfish, saying that she was only interested in achieving her own goals at any cost.
In 1990, Wanda met a man with whom she finally felt happy and made plans for the future. But when they tried to reach the top of the Broad Peak, he fell and died in front of her. "[She] said, you know, I won‘t have any brakes anymore. I have to reach all 14 peaks now,” said a biographer Krystyna Pietrusewicz
By the end of 1990, Wanda had climbed six peaks over 8,000 metres. No other woman in the world had reached more by that time. That year, she set herself the goal of reaching the remaining eight peaks in less than a year, which was very ambitious. Many colleagues said that this was impossible, and Wanda was going to die.
In 1991, she climbed Cho Oyu, her seventh summit above 8,000 metres, quite easily. A month later, at the end of October, she went to Annapurna with a Polish international expedition.
Wanda was ready to set off for the summit, but due to strong winds, she decided to return to the base and rest for a few days. She tried a second time but was again unsuccessful. Finally, she injured her leg. The other male members of the expedition left her alone because they did not think she was able to climb. Wanda took painkillers and tried to climb alone. At last, she succeeded and reached her eighth peak above 8,000 metres.
The death she wanted
Less than a month later, Wanda unsuccessfully tried to climb Dhaulagiri. In the spring of 1992, a year after she had set her goal, the woman still had six peaks left.
Then, she made her third attempt to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain. The expedition was difficult from the start. Four climbers dropped out because of injury or illness. In the end, only Wanda and Carlos Carsolio, her friend from Mexico, were left to continue climbing.
Wanda was climbing more slowly, so Carlos did not wait for her. He reached the top. As he descended, he met Wanda, who was still climbing up. “For him, Wanda was the most famous climber in the world. He didn’t even think that she wouldn’t come back,” Pietrusewicz said.
Carlos descended but he never met Wanda again. She disappeared on May 12, 1992. Her body was never found. No one knows whether she reached the summit.
“I don’t seek death, but I don’t mind if it happens in the mountains. It would be an easy death for me. Many of my friends are waiting for me in the mountains,” Wanda once said.
The story is based on the book Wanda Rutkiewicz - A Caravan of Dreams by Getrude Reinisch, as well as memoirs collected by Krystyna Pietrusewicz and Wanda. Opowieść o sile życia i śmierci by Anna Kamińska. Photos from the expeditions are courtesy of the Jerzy Kukuczka museum.
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