Vera Komarkova

In 2018, Arlene Blum — mountaineer, author, chemist, environmentalist, among many other hats — was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. She was joined in her class by Robert Redford, Joan Baez, and Fernando Valenzuela, among a handful of fellow luminaries. To the mountaineering world, Blum is best known for leading the team that made the first women’s ascent of Annapurna in 1978. Only eight people had climbed the 26,545-foot peak before Blum’s expedition, all of them men. When Blum entered the Hall, it became impossible not to remember Vera Komárková, the climber who, along with Irene Miller, actually stood on the summit — and who had died, quietly and largely out of the public eye, in 2005.

Komárková’s determination was a large part of what got two women to the summit of Annapurna on October 15, 1978, when she and Miller stood atop the deadliest 8,000-meter peak in the world, completing the 1978 American Women’s Himalayan Expedition’s mission. It was also why two male Sherpa accompanied