She sewed her climbing trousers from old curtains
Junko Tabei couldn't afford real gear, got buried alive by an avalanche twelve days before the summit, and still made history.
In 1975, Junko Tabei was rejected by most of Japan's mountaineering establishment for the same reason twice: she was a woman, and expeditions were assumed to be a men's undertaking. So she started her own all-women climbing club and financed an Everest attempt without corporate sponsors, teaching piano lessons on the side to help cover each member's share of the cost. She made her own waterproof gloves out of car-seat covers and stitched climbing trousers from old curtain fabric because outdoor gear built for a woman's frame barely existed yet.
Twelve days before the summit, at 20,700 feet, an avalanche hit the team's camp. Tabei was buried and knocked unconscious; Sherpa guides dug her out. She could barely walk for two days afterward.
She kept climbing. Altitude sickness among the team's Sherpas meant only enough oxygen for one woman to attempt the final push, so a teammate nominated Tabei to go. Near the top she found an unmarked ridge of ice no previous account had warned her about and crossed it sideways, on her hands and knees, by her own description the most frightening stretch of the whole climb.
On May 16, 1975, she became the first woman to summit Mount Everest. The gear was improvised. The route had gaps nobody had mapped. She went anyway, because the alternative was waiting for permission that wasn't coming.