by A British adventurer plans to climb Mont Blanc wearing a replica of the outfit in which a woman conquered one of the world’s most dangerous peaks in 1838.
Lise Wortley will eschew modern high-altitude gear for bulky pantaloons, an ankle-length woolen coat and a feather boa to climb the 15,777ft peak in the French Alps later this year.
She wears a huge bonnet to protect against falling rocks and night temperatures well below freezing.
Ms Wortley hopes to emulate the pioneering achievement of Henriette d’Angeville in 1838.
In a replica of the costume designed by d’Angeville, Miss Wortley will only use equipment available to her predecessor.
Mr Wortley, 34, is planning his climb for early September to reach the summit on the four-day anniversary of the rise of Angeville.
The adventure is one of a series of trips in which she retraces the routes taken by female explorers of the past, using the same methods of transport and vintage equipment as they did or a close replica.
Students at Morley College near Ms Wortley’s home in south London are making the costume.
In the 1830s in France, women were not encouraged to climb mountains and there were no clothes designed for such activities. D’Angeville, a 44-year-old gentleman who had dreamed of climbing Mont Blanc all his life after growing up in its shadow, designed a suit to protect her no matter what the conditions. Made without using modern lightweight materials, her clothes weighed 27 pounds.
Ms Wortley has her gear custom-made, including hobnail boots, and her bonnet is being created by the milliner who supplied hats for the Harry Potter films.
She said: “I wanted to know what the women went through and I don’t think I could understand it if I was in modern clothes.
“Even almost 200 years later there are still far more men than women in this outdoor adventure space. I could only find one female mountain guide to take me up Mont Blanc, but there are many guys. I think there’s a direct correlation between how women haven’t been given a platform and haven’t seen themselves represented in this world yet.”
D’Angeville had six guides and six porters to carry her equipment and supplies including 26 roast chickens, 18 bottles of wine, two veals, a leg of lamb, 12 lemons and three pounds of chocolate.
Ms Wortley is a vegetarian and will only be a female filmmaker and mountain guide. She says she could take a bottle of wine for emergencies.
Ms Wortley will face the dangers of the altitude sickness that struck D’Angeville and forced her to abandon the climb. She wrote in her account that she gained new determination when her guides suggested they could carry her. Horrified at the thought of bottling out just below the summit, she insisted that when she finally did they created a human tower so she could climb higher than any man in history.
When she reached the top at 1.25am D’Angeville was feeling light-headed from lack of oxygen.
It is estimated that more than 1,400 people have died trying to climb Mont Blanc, claiming their lives by falls, falling rocks or getting lost in hazardous conditions.
Ms Wortley said: “It’s the deadliest mountain in the world because more people die on it every year. That is because it is quite accessible and many people who go up are not really prepared because they think it is easy.
“We are going to try to take the route that Henriette did but because of global warming everything is getting hotter and that part is quite dangerous. Rocks slide because the ice is melting.”
Some time after reaching the summit of Mont Blanc, d’Angeville discovered that she was not the first woman to set foot there. In 1808 Marie Paradis, a maid in a Chamonix inn, climbed, but she was deemed inadmissible as a record because she passed out from exhaustion and lack of oxygen and had to be carried part of the way. Thirty years later she was among the first to congratulate d’Angeville on what she had achieved.
Ms Wortley said: “It’s so hard to organize these things, to get the funding, to organize the route and I’ve got my job too, that the climb feels like it could be the easiest part of the whole thing. “
In the year 2023 she was abandoned with only basic supplies and left to fend for herself in the Canadian wilderness for Channel 4’s documentary series Alone. She followed in the footsteps of a former Freya Stark through the Fasmhar Valley in western Iran wearing a vintage Burberry Mac and 100 year old boots.
His Mont Blanc attempt is sponsored by adventure travel company Explore Wild.
