When you think of mountaineers and climbers, what do you picture? Chances are it isn’t a woman from the Middle East reaching some of the world’s highest summits. But why not? Meet the female athletes from Palestine to Oman who are breaking records and challenging stereotypes with every step they take.
Nelly Attar was the second Lebanese woman in history to stand on the top of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest)—but she doesn’t remember a thing. She only remembers her fingers feeling very cold while waiting for her fellow climbers to arrive on the roof of the world. It was the early morning of May 23, 2019.
“Mentally, I detached during the climb. I felt really terrified. But there’s some force that kept me going, and I powered through,” she says. “But I don’t remember what I saw. I don’t remember how it felt. It was only back at Base Camp that the relief, the joy finally set in.”
Standing at 5’2” (157cm), with a full head of bouncy curls, Attar doesn’t look like a traditional high-altitude mountaineer, though she does hold a Guinness World Record for the most four-finger pull-ups in a minute. But she’s one of the most recognizable faces in an unprecedented wave of elite female Arab climbers who are defying expectations in a sport overwhelmingly dominated by men.
In 2023, women accounted for 12 percent of climbers on Sagarmatha, up from five percent in 2010. Named after George Everest, a former 19th-century Surveyor General of India, the mountain’s Tibetan name is Chomolungma (‘Mother Goddess of the World”) while the Nepali name is Sagarmatha, which has several meanings, one of which is ‘Peak of Heaven.
But it’s not just Attar’s gender that takes many by surprise. She was raised in Saudi Arabia, where she trained for high-altitude mountains by climbing sand dunes and running marathons in abayas, traditional long dresses typically worn for modesty.
The historic day she summited Sagarmatha, Attar was part of an all-female Arab team comprising Joyce Azzam of Lebanon, Mona Shahab of Saudi Arabia, and Nadhira Al Harthy of Oman. Before summiting, an American male climber scoffed at the team discouragingly in disbelief. All the women later reached the summit—but he didn’t.
The Sagarmatha ascent laid the groundwork for further record-breaking achievements for the team. In 2022, three years after climbing Sagarmatha, Attar became the first Arab person to stand atop K2, the world’s second tallest mountain at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters).
“He messaged us after, saying, ‘I underestimated you guys. You know, these women coming from the Middle East, what are they going to be able to do?’,” Attar says. “But it was really nice of him to actually send a message like that, and he was like: ‘You guys really proved me wrong. You were really strong.”
The Sagarmatha ascent laid the groundwork for further record-breaking achievements for the team. In 2022, three years after climbing Sagarmatha, Attar became the first Arab person to stand atop K2, the world’s second tallest mountain at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters). Located in the Karakoram range on the Pakistan-China border, K2 is more deadly and technically challenging than Sagarmatha, claiming the lives of one in every four climbers. Al Harthy was close behind Attar, successfully summiting to become the first Omani to stand on its jagged ridge.
Only 14 peaks on earth reach above 8,000 meters. All are located within either the Himalayas or Karakoram mountain ranges, bisecting Nepal, China, India, and Pakistan. Of these, Attar has now summited five: Sagarmatha, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, and Makalu. Al-Harthy has also summited five: Sagarmatha, K2, Manasalu, Gasherbrum II, and Nanga Parbat.
For her part, Lebanon’s Azzam has ascended the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent—Sagarmatha (Asia), Elbrus (Europe), Aconcagua (South America), Denali (North America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Vinson (Antarctica) and Mount Puncak Jaya (Oceania)—a feat fewer than 80 women in history have successfully completed. But for these women, it’s about more than the accolades; they climb for the physical and mental challenges the mountains pose, and the quiet moments of clarity.
For Azzam, who is a UN Goodwill Ambassador to Lebanon, climbing offered unrealized possibilities. She never imagined she could be an athlete, let alone an elite mountaineer. She was born with hypermobility syndrome, and as a child, exercise caused her extreme pain. Raised during the Lebanese Civil War, she also lived amid the Israeli bombing and intense sectarian violence of the 1980s.
“Growing up, I learned early about fear, instability, and survival,” Azzam tells me. “When I discovered the mountains, I found the opposite of war: A sense of peace, joy, and freedom. Hiking up to the Lebanese summits of Qornet es Saouda or Mount Sannine, I fell in love with their beauty, silence, and the long hours of walking. Mountains became my mentors, and they made me stronger.”
Al Harthy similarly never envisioned such possibilities for herself. She was raised by a large conservative family in a rural village in Oman, where she had little access to the outdoors and physical activity was discouraged. Today, works at Oman’s Ministry of Education and runs programs to connect students to the country’s natural beauty. In her free time, she seeks out challenges posed by the extreme conditions of altitude.
“The mountains always give me what I’m looking for. I find myself there, so I don’t need others to tell me who I am,” Al Harthy says. “Every climb gives me something different to evaluate, my body, my emotions. I love that I can feel weak, but then I hike and feel strong.”
But Al Harthy, who wears a hijab, also finds herself fielding questions that have little to do with her athletic accomplishments. “I have done so many interviews with Western publications, and they always ask me about my hijab—if it’s challenging for me, how I climbed Everest [Sagarmatha] with it,” she tells me. “It’s never been a challenge for me. I’m wearing a hijab by choice.”
After appearing as the first hijabi woman in an international Nike campaign, marathoner, mountaineer, and women’s rights activist Manal Rostom went on to summit Sagarmatha in 2022—the first Egyptian woman to do so.
Yet her students at home pose similar questions. “They always ask me, like, ‘Can I do this as a woman? Can I dream about this if I am a girl from this region, if I am wearing a hijab?’ I told them, yes, of course, it’s all about your hard work. It’s about your mentality, how strong you are, how you believe in yourself.”
The women tackling nature’s biggest challenges all carry with them a desire to inspire girls in their home countries to push their own boundaries. In 2017, Attar opened Saudi Arabia’s first dance studio, MOVE, encouraging women to connect with their bodies and claim space. Mountaineering became an extension of that journey, another way to redefine what was possible for women wanting to move, physically and metaphorically beyond expectations.
While climbing Sagarmatha, Attar stayed connected to her dance studio and attempted to inspire women throughout the region by documenting her journey. “I was still doing dance challenges from up there on Instagram, connecting to the girls on the ground in Saudi,” she says. In high altitude conditions with reduced oxygen and sub-freezing temperatures, she continued to dance. And as Attar puts it, if she could do dance challenges “up from Everest in a storm,” it would encourage more girls to move back home and dream big.
Beyond Attar, Azzam, and Al Harthy, many other Arab women have been breaking barriers on the world’s highest peaks, challenging who belongs in these outdoor spaces. Palestinian mountaineer Suzanne Al Houby led the way in 2011 as the first Arab woman to summit Sagarmatha, later becoming the first Arab woman on Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Denali and Aconcagua, to name a few, and the first to complete the Seven Summits.
Qatar’s Sheikha Asma Al Thani, a mountaineer and member of the Qatari royal family, has now climbed nine of the 14 peaks. She completed Manasalu in Nepal, the world’s eighth-highest peak, without supplemental oxygen, a rare feat for any elite climber. And after appearing as the first hijabi woman in an international Nike campaign, marathoner, mountaineer, and women’s rights activist Manal Rostom went on to summit Sagarmatha in 2022—the first Egyptian woman to do so.
But still, stereotypes and gender bias persist, as Azzam says. “At times I’ve been underestimated, as a woman, as someone from the Arab world, and as a climber with a physical condition. But on the mountain, we aren’t women or men—we are just mountaineers.”
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Kate McMahon is a freelance journalist focused on the Middle East and South Asia. After eight years of exploring the world and living out of a backpack, she made Egypt her home. Today, she reports on environmental change, human rights, and sustainable travel. She's also a scuba instructor and avid hiker.
