Lydia Bradey
Getting to the top of Mt Everest was for our most famous New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, the making of a legend. But the same feat for Lydia Bradey, the first New Zealand woman to get to the top of the world, was surrounded in controversey. In 1988 when she was 27, Lydia was part of an international expedition, along with fellow New Zealanders Rob Hall and Gary Ball on Everest.
Split into different teams, she eventually made the ascent on her own without oxygen, only to return to a storm of doubt cast over whether she'd made it to summit. A keen climber since her teenage years, having grown up as the only child of a solo mother, much of Lydia's life has been devoted to being in the mountains.
Her story is told in a new book, Going Up is Easy written with her friend Laurence Fearnley.
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