Photo credit Jeff Lipsky

I’ve been interested in a mountain in Myanmar for some time. It’s called Hkakabo Razi, and at 19,295 feet, it’s the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. It’s also one of the most inaccessible mountains in the world. It takes weeks of walking through a snake-infested jungle just to reach the base of the mountain. In 2014, National Geographic and the North Face mounted an expedition to climb it. The expedition leader was a woman named Hilaree O’Neill. I didn’t know anything about O’Neill, so I started looking around. I was impressed by her toughness and success in the traditionally male-dominated world of mountaineering. I profiled her in Outside.