On this day in 1939, Junko Tabei was born in Miharu, in Fukushima Prefecture. Thirty-five years later she was the organising force behind the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition, and I have a soft spot for how it was paid for. The sponsorship did not cover it, so the members covered the rest themselves; Tabei taught piano lessons. Gear was patched and improvised where the budget ran out. That is the part of expedition life nobody films: the arithmetic done at a kitchen table months before anyone sees snow.

The ledger from the mountain is harder. On 4 May 1975 an avalanche came down on their camp at around 6,300 metres and buried tents with people inside them. Tabei was pulled out unconscious by the Sherpa staff. Twelve days later, on 16 May, she went to the summit with Ang Tsering, who cut and climbed the last stretch with her, and she became the first woman to stand on top of Everest. In 1992 she finished the Seven Summits, the highest point on every continent.

She kept climbing and kept teaching, and she died in 2016. If you read one thing about her, read what she said about being a mother of two who went anyway, and note the name of the man beside her on the ridge.