Books and Films Highlighting Adventurous Women
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we want to bring the stories of awesome, adventurous women to you! While we focus our own outdoor endeavors on backyard adventures and spend more time on screens and social media, we encourage you to look to these women and get inspired. Take this opportunity to plan your next big adventure!
Arelene Blum: Arelene Blum helped pave the way for women to be seen as competent and capable climbers on the world’s biggest mountains. Blum led an all-female expedition to Denali, participated in an expedition to Everest, and most notably led an all-women expedition to Annapurna in 1978. At the time, Annapurna had only been climbed by eight men. The expedition placed the first two women and the first Americans on the summit. Check out the story in Annapurna: A Woman’s Place. Blum’s second book, Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life is a memoir that reflects on her life as a groundbreaking climber and scientist.
Mirna Valerio: Mirna Valerio is an ultramarathoner, mother, and Spanish teacher who is breaking stereotypes and expectations. She advocates for diversity and inclusion in the running industry. She began with a blog, Fat Girl Running, and now she’s a sponsored athlete. You don’t want to miss this short video from REI. Need some uplifting inspiration? Read Valerio’s book, A Beautiful Work in Progress.
Mina Hubbard: In Great Heart: The History of Labrador Adventure, Leonidas Hubbard ventured into the unknown Labrador wilderness in 1903 with hopes to explore and map the region. His ill-fated expedition resulted in an uncommon race, between Dillon Wallace, Hubbard’s expedition partner, and Mina Hubbard, Hubbard’s wife. In 1905 Mina took on her own expedition with George Elson. She planned to prove her husband’s theories and complete his unfinished expedition. Authors James Davidson and John Rugge recreate these two expeditions. Today parts of Labrador remain a difficult and unforgiving wilderness. Mina’s drive and sense of adventure led her to explore this region 115 years ago, despite big skirts, and being told she didn’t belong.
Kate Harris: In Kate Harris’s book, Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road, Harris and her friend Mel Yule set off on a cycling adventure, spending months traveling across the Silk Road. Harris writes about crossing borders. Her poetic metaphors navigate modern-day exploration, friendship, self-doubt, and determination. Follow their adventure as they bike from Turkey to Tibet. Lands of Lost Borders won the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award and a 2018 Nautilus Award.
Laura Dekker: Maidentrip is a feature-length documentary that follows Laura Dekker, a 14-year-old sailor, who set out on a two-year voyage to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone. Much of the filming by Laura, when she is alone at sea. The full-length film is available on Amazon Prime. Interested? Watch the trailer.
Losing Sight of Shore: “Losing Sight of Shore follows the extraordinary journey of four brave women known as the Coxless Crew that set out to row the Pacific Ocean from America to Australia unsupported. As they row over 8,000 miles during their nine months at sea, they face extreme mental and physical challenges they must overcome in order to go down in history. This is a story of perseverance, friendship, and the power of the human spirit. Everyone has a Pacific to cross.” (https://losingsightofshore.com/synopsis/) The full-length film is available on Netflix. If you only have a few minutes, check out the trailer.
Liz Clark: In 2006 Clark set out on a voyage aboard her 40 sailboat to fulfill a life long dream, to travel by boat and surf. After 10 years of solo sailing, she worked with Patagonia to release a book, SWELL: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening, about her adventures. Check out this short video about her voyage.
Helen Thayer: What is it like to travel on foot alone though one of the most dangerous regions on Earth? In Helen Thayer’s book, Polar Dream The First Solo Expedition by a Woman and Her Dog to the North Pole, she describes here adventure. In 1988 at the age of 50, she set out, with her dog, to travel to the Magnetic North Pole. Her book details the hardships she faced, high winds, extraordinarily challenging navigation, polar bears, and cold temperatures.
Helen Hamlin: With Helen Hamlin’s classic, Nine Mile Bridge Three Years in the Maine Woods, experience big adventure close to home. “In this critically acclaimed Maine classic, set in the 1930s, Helen Hamlin writes of her adventures in the Maine wilderness. Hamlin was warned that remote Churchill Depot, an isolated lumber camp located at the headwaters of the Allagash River, was “no place for a woman.” Despite the warning, Hamlin set off at age twenty to teach school at the tiny camp. After teaching for one year, she married a game warden, and moved deeper into the wilderness, where she spent her next three years. Hamlin effectively captures this time in her life, complete with the trappers, foresters, lumbermen, woods folk, wild animals, and natural splendor that she discovered first at Umsaskis Lake and then at Nine Mile Bridge on the St. John River.” (https://www.islandportpress.com/nine-mile-bridge.html)