I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on Karen McNeill. She was working in a coffee shop in Canmore, and I was waiting in line with a mutual friend who had offered to introduce me to one of the few female ice climbers in the area. What struck me most about her was her hair: thick, black, curly, outrageous tufts of it. She was five foot six, had pale freckled skin, and a much more feminine figure than I did. When she looked at me, her eyes sparkled, as if from some inner personal joke. We chatted briefly as I paid for my coffee, and made a plan to meet up after work that evening to go for a walk along the Bow River.
After a few introductory exchanges, I asked Karen why she had moved to Canada, because I knew that there were
Karen amid the boulders at the base of Cho Oyu, 1996. Photo Marg Saul
beautiful mountains in her home country of New Zealand.
“Sure, we have mountains,” she explained, “but the terrain is not as steep, it’s not as cold, and therefore we don’t have the volume of frozen waterfalls that you have here in the Canadian Rockies. Basically, I moved here to climb ice.”
We walked and talked for over two hours that night, and our connection was as effortless as it was instantaneous. I found myself telling her things that night that I rarely talked about with most people. She listened intently, and was fully present in a way that most people are not. This trait would become Karen’s defining feature over the next twelve years of our friendship, as it would for anyone else who took the time to get to know her.
By the time I met her in the fall of 1994, Karen had done a fair bit of mountaineering, and she had already been on an expedition to Nepal. She had recently read a book by Arlene Blum where the author asserted that the only way for a woman to become a better climber was to climb as much as possible with other women. We made a pact to follow this advice. Soon after this, Karen set off on an all-women’s expedition to Cho Oyu, and this would set aflame her desire to be at the forefront of women’s alpine climbing.
After instructing the women's clinic at the 2003 Canmore Ice Climbing Festival: Margo Talbot, Kim Csizmazia, Su Young-Leslie, Karen McNeill
When I think back on our winters of climbing ice together, what I remember most is our conversations. Karen had a way of making communication about the other person rather than herself, a rare and fine trait that I greatly admired. It was as though she had some sort of a sixth sense, and could feel when one of her friends was upset, or worried, or scared. What this meant as her friend was that you didn’t get away with anything, but you also felt like she was the most trusted ally you could have in this world: you knew she would take your secrets to her grave.
Karen’s big heart wasn’t reserved just for her close friends; she also loved making a difference in kid’s lives through teaching. Before Karen had moved to Canada, she had earned her teaching degree at the University of Christchurch. During the winter months she would leave her job at the local coffee shop to substitute teach, first at the local schools in Canmore, and then exclusively with the children she related to so deeply out on the Morley Indian Reserve east of town. Karen found it hard to relate to privilege and entitlement, and preferred focusing her energy on those people who needed her gifts the most.
Although Karen was quite shy when I met her, she had a penchant for wearing outrageously coloured clothing. She
Karen auctioning off gaitors at the Chicks with Picks fundraiser circa 2005. Chris Giles Photography
made no bones about the fact that she thought Canadians were too conservative in their attire. She also began wearing glitter makeup and sparkle jewellery whenever she went out to social functions. We regularly went to the local Saan store to buy inexpensive versions of these, as well as to the local fabric shops, where she would proceed to pick out colourful fake fur to sew onto our favourite fleece tops.
Karen loved to be out in the mountains. She didn’t care if she was tied into a rope on an ice climb, or scrambling along a rocky ridge top: it was all pure joy to her. She wanted to travel the world, one expedition at a time. She felt her best when she was fully immersed in her passion. As she continued to be at the forefront of women’s climbing, Karen was offered sponsorship by Mountain Hardwear, and quickly teamed up with fellow athlete Sue Nott to climb at home and abroad. No sooner would she be back from one expedition, than she would be planning the next. Her enthusiasm was infectious; her energy boundless.
Karen approaching the top of Xiashe (about 6000m), in Western Sichuan in 2005, during her first ascent with Pat Deavoll.
Karen and Sue both shared the goal of pushing the limits of female alpinism in both North America and the world. Their partnership led them on several training trips and expeditions, culminating in the first all-women’s ascent of the Cassin Ridge on Denali in the spring of 2005.
When Karen returned from this trip she was more psyched than ever to pursue her dreams. She told me that after climbing in some of the most remote wilderness on the planet, the Alaska Range was her favourite. Six months after summiting the Cassin Ridge, Karen and Sue were planning their next foray into the mountains of Alaska. This time they chose a formidable route on Mount Foraker, appropriately called “The Infinite Spur”. It was a difficult, remote, and committing line, one that had tested the best of the world’s climbers. This would be the first time the route would be attempted by women, something that had become somewhat of a requirement for both of them.
They spent the next six months gleaning information from every climber who had been on the route, and planning their strategy for the ascent. They registered their intent with the Parks Service, calling themselves “Team Turtle” because neither of them was known for being a fast climber. I spoke with Karen in the weeks leading up to her departure for Alaska. I was keenly aware of an undercurrent of apprehension in the river of her commitment. I knew that she would do what she had always done: she would travel to her objective and find out if her reservations were simply the pre-expedition jitters, or a full-fledged warning signal.
On May 9, 2006, the two women met up at base camp and began sorting their gear and deciding how much food and fuel to take up the mountain. It’s a delicate balance for alpine climbers: you want to be sure not to run out of these necessities, at the same time you don’t want to bog yourself down with too much weight. Three days later they skied into the base of their objective. They ran into another party of climbers who had retreated from high up on the mountain due to ominous clouds on the horizon. These two women must have been an impressive sight to the party they passed, with their huge packs, and their own relatively tiny frames. They bade the climbers goodbye, deciding to continue up to see what they would find.
Karen and Sue never returned from their trip. They disappeared high up on Mount Foraker in a rare, but precedented, high-pressure storm. The Parks Service launched one of the longest and most intense searches in their history. The death of Karen and Sue hit the climbing community hard, and was particularly heart-wrenching for women climbers all over the world. At first the news was met with incredulity, then conjecture, and finally acceptance. It was obvious from the rescue photos that there were tracks high up on the mountain, past all of the technical difficulties on the route. This would have been a groundbreaking ascent in the world of women’s alpine climbing, and this made their disappearance all the more riven with speculation. In the end, though, we had to content ourselves with what few clues were left behind.
Karen and Sue stood on the shoulders of those who came before, and have themselves become part of the platform for those who will come after. Our consolation is that they died pursuing the dream of advancing women’s alpinism, and that their bodies rest in peace high up in the mountain range that had captured their hearts.
Margo Talbot
Margo Talbot is an Outdoor Research sponsored athlete who has taken clients to such remote regions as the South Pole in Antarctica. She has guided for Chicks with Picks and runs an adventure guiding company for women called The Glitter Girls. Her first book, “All That Glitters” , will be released June 6, 2011 by Sono Nis Press. To learn more about Margo visit her website.
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