The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali by Cassidy Randall

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali by Cassidy Randall Amazon.com The gripping story of a group of female adventurers and their treacherous pioneering ascent of Denali. Excerpted in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Men's Journal, and named one of the most noteworthy books of the month by the Washington Post Cassidy Randall draws on extensive archival research and original interviews to tell an engrossing, edge-of-the-seat adventure story about a forgotten group of climbers who had the audacity to believe that women could walk alone in extraordinary and treacherous heights. Grace Hoeman dreamed of standing on top of Denali. The tallest peak in North America, the fierce polar mountain loomed large in many climbers’ imaginations, and Grace, a doctor in Alaska, had come close to the top, only to be turned back by altitude sickness and a storm that took the lives of seven fellow climbers in one remorseless blow. Other expeditions denied her a place because of her gender, and when a letter arrived from a climber in California named Arlene Blum, who’d also been barred from expeditions—unless she stayed in base camp and cooked for the men, Grace got a defiant idea: she would organize and lead the first-ever all-female ascent of the frozen Alaskan peak. Everyone told the “Denali Damsels,” as the team called themselves, that it couldn’t be done: Women were incapable of climbing mountains on their own. Men had walked on the moon; women still had not stood on the highest points on Earth. But these six women were unwilling to be limited by sexists and misogynists. They pushed past barriers in society at large, the climbing world, and their own bodies. And then, when disaster struck at the worst time on their expedition, they could either keep their wits and prove their mettle, or die and confirm the worst opinions of men.About the author Cassidy Randall is an award-winning writer who tells stories on the environment, adventure, and people who expand human potential. She’s the author of the new survival epic THIRTY BELOW: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’ s Ascent of Denali; and THE HARD PARTS with Paralympian Oksana Masters, which won an Alex Award from the American Library Association and was listed as one of the best sports books of the year by the Times. Her stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, the New York Times, TIME, Outside, and Men’s Journal, among others. Her work has been awarded the Lowell Thomas Gold Medal in Adventure Writing, short-listed for the True Story Award, and included in The Year’s Best Sports Writing.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Beautiful. She sounds like I'm losing it there. As somebody let me out of the rubber room there and took off the thing. What's going on? I sound crazy in the voice there.

Anyway guys, welcome to the Big Show. As always, we have the smartest people on the show, damn it. Or else. Always. Like that's the whole reason you listen to us. Not that you like my idiot comedy, which is really awful when it comes down to it. But I don't know, sometimes dying is funnier than killing. Anyway guys, we have an amazing young lady on the show.

We're going to be talking about her hot new book that's coming to the presses and some insights and experience. It's a book that comes out March 4th, 2025. But now that I've teased you with it, I have to tell you refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to GoodReads.com. Lawyers said I have to say this. YouTube.com for it, that's Chris Foss. LinkedIn.in.com for which has Chris Foss, Chris Foss won the

Tik Tok and Chris Foss Facebook.com. Anyway, she is an amazing lady. Cassidy Randall joins us on the show. Her book out March 4th, 2025 that you can preorder now and get it wherever fine books are sold is called 30 Below, therowing and heroic story of the first all woman's ascent of Denali, the mountain that is. That's not the title of the book, I just added that for fun there folks. Anyway, we're going to be talking about her and her insights or experience in her wrecking this history. So Cassidy Randall is an award-winning writer who tells stories on

the environment and adventure and people who expand human potential. I guess that's why I made her list. I destroy human potential, I guess. She's the author of the new Survivor epic, 30 Below, and she also wrote the first all-women's...oh, okay. And she also wrote the hard parts with Paralympian O...Oak? Oak. Sanna Masters. I'm having a brain fart tonight. Which won the Alex Award from the American Library Association was listed as one of the best sports books of the year by The Times. That's pretty awesome. Her stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, National Geographic,

The New York Times, Time Magazine, Outside, and Men's Journal among others. And she's been awarded the Lowell Thomas Gold Medal in adventure writing, shortlisted for True Story Award, and included in the year's best sports writing. Good to know people still reading books. Welcome to the show, Cassidy, how are you? I am better now that you called me young. I'm really honored.

I know I have the voice of a 12-year-old girl, but I also appreciate that. I mean, it doesn't sound quite 12, but I don't talk to 12 year olds. I'm not like on Chris Hansen's show yet. But yeah, I mean, you sound young. You look young. Run with it. I will. So Cassidy, give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yes, I am at CassidyRandall.com, which is where you can also find my books. And I write on the Wilder Path at Substack and you can find me on Instagram too.

Pete Slauson Oh, the Insta as the kids call it. I don't know if the kids call it the Insta, but so give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your new hot book. De'Nolly Yes. So, this book, which is called 30 Below, you can, if you're watching, you can disregard my hot pink or hot yellow bookmark in there. But it is not just about the first all-women's ascent of Denali. It was about the first all-women's ascent of any of the world's big peaks. And context is important here. So, by 1970, when this climb happened, we had sent men to the moon and women hadn't stood on the highest points on earth. Pete Slauson Oh, wow. Why do women hate mountains? No, I'm just teasing. Go ahead.

Lauren Exactly, right? More, why was it that they weren't allowed, essentially? So, there was a – Pete They weren't allowed? Lauren I would say they were not welcome. Pete Okay. It was, that was kind of in the age where, I remember there was the, in the 70s, there was a marathon and there was the woman who ran the first marathon, she kind of hijacked it. Lauren Catherine Switzer. the seventies, there was a marathon and there was the woman who ran the first marathon, she kind of hijacked it. And they were attacking her.

And I was like, what the fuck? Yes. She ran the first marathon, the race organizer exited a bus, ran after her, yanked on her to pull her out of the race. And her boyfriend who was running with her, who was a 235 pound basketball player, body blocked the race director so she could keep running. Pete Slauson Good. That's good. You know, everyone's got to run. Everyone's got to learn

to run for the hills when that time comes. What made you interested in this story? Lauren Ruffin So many things. One was if this was such a big deal, why had we never heard of this before? It should have been somewhere in our collective consciousness, in our history, and we hadn't. And there are a few reasons for that. And the other thing was that it was this incredible survival story. Like, this was not just, they wandered up a peak. There was so much at play and it was so fast-paced and really cool to get to tell that story. It was really fun to write. Yeah. And so how did you discover the story?

How did it come to you? I wish that it was a lightning bolt moment, but it was an email from my agent and she had sent me a link and all she wrote was, is there a good story here? I think was this national park service blog post from 2022 or something. And it was just a 500-word write-up of this climb, celebrating the 50th anniversary of it. And that's when I landed on it, just thought, this is something I should have heard about. I had been writing about adventure and women's issues for years by then, and it was floor that I had never even seen this. Pete Slauson Yeah. And I mean, there's the great thing about a lot of, and kind of the great thing about COVID,

if you can say there's a great thing about it, is there are so many great books that got written. And so we've just had just an amazing run of thousands of stories. And a lot of them were lost in history. And so that's why we need journalists like you and people to write these books is there's so many, you know, I mean, they just basically, you know, in school, I think my history lesson was there's a bunch of old guys, they signed a document, eh? And then there was like a war and then we were like a country. All right, keep moving. It wasn't that bad.

We have wonderful teachers too. I shouldn't, I shouldn't talk poorly about teachers, but no, it, you know, there's, I mean, histories, there's a lot of stories and people have stories. That's why we love the show is people bring their stories on and you learn stuff about history. There was a lot of history that got left out and so it's great that you discovered these stories. Denali, I recently heard about Denali because it's January 2025 for you watching YouTube 10 years from now, assuming we're still operating everything. And Denali was being renamed, or it's supposed to be renamed. They might be

fighting it in court. Evidently, Alaska isn't happy about it. But what is Denali as a mountain? And why is it important? Why are people renaming the thing maybe? I don't know. Lauren Ruffin Yeah, I do think it's interesting that as one of his first acts in office, Trump decided to rename a mountain, which maybe there were more important things, just saying, but so Denali, it means in Koyakon, Atabaskan, the great one. And it had been called Denali and intertwined with this pursuit mountaineering that mainstream culture has long romanticized. I mean you think about the first people who were watching the first

ascent in the Alps with binoculars from the Valley floor in like the 1800s to our modern obsession with Everest and so the fact that Denali was already intertwined with Mount Meering before Congress had nonsensically renamed it Mount McKinley in 1896, somewhere around there. Pete Slauson Oh! Anna Marley Nonsensically, because McKinley didn't even see, he's never seen the mountain. Pete Slauson No one even cared. I don't even know who he is. He's like some

1800s president that, I don't know. I don't even know what he did. How does he get a mountain? Why don't we put up a, why don't we put up a mountain for, I don't know, John F. Kennedy or something to submit? John F. Kennedy, a mountain? People like't we put up a mountain for, I don't know, John F. Kennedy or something. Does John F. Kennedy have a mountain? People like him. He does not. No, let's get him a mountain. As far as I know, actually. I mean, he was the guy who started the space race, the golden age of America, you know,

ask not what you can do, yada, yada, yada. And then, you know, started the whole space thing and like phones and everything we have is from, let's name that Denali. But anyway, so Denali is the highest point in North America. It's basically like our Everest sort of thing. Lauren Ruffin It is, which does make it really important in our national consciousness, right? But what's interesting is even over the century that it was named McKinley, so Obama restored the name Denali in 2015. Pete Slauson That's what this is about.

Anna Slauson Yes. Pete Slauson I get it now. Okay. Anna Slauson But even over that century that it was called McKinley, climbers, Alaskans, a lot of Americans didn't call it McKinley, they still called it Denali. Pete Slauson It's a great name. Anna Slauson Yeah, it's a great name. Pete Slauson Yeah, Denali. Anna Slauson And so, you know, a lot of Alaskans and climbers have already come forward to say that they will

keep calling the mountain Denali, there's not really much to be done about that. I just like it. It's a punchy name, Denali. It like says, I'm going to kick your ass if you don't. And that mountain will. And yeah, it's kind of like Everest. I will kill you, but you can try. You can try to climb me. Tell us about these women. Were you able to interview them? I know the story is older. Were you able to interview them and get their story? At first when I got the book I thought you might have been one of the climbers, but then I saw that this was done a few years ago.

Yeah, in 1970. And you're a 12 year old girl according to your voice. It's not on the mountain. I just assumed. I'm likely probably not 12 year old's climate in Olly. So now I bet they would, but it's not that. So these women, so there are six women who did this and only two of them are still alive, Arlene Boone who lives in California and she was the deputy leader and Margaret Clark, who lives in California and she was the deputy leader and Margaret Clark who lives in New Zealand. And I would just want to say that I would like to be like Margaret Clark when I grow up. She's

probably 90 now. She's only just now starting to lose her mobility. She's really pissed off about it, but she refuses to use a walker and instead she has a hiking pole in every room. Pete Slauson Really? That's pretty awesome. Margaret Clark I like it. Pete Slauson A hiking pole in every room. I'm gonna do that. You know, I had a friend who had some back injuries from a car accident, you know, somebody hit him. And I remember seeing him walking with a cane. I was like, dude, you should just, why don't you get a wheelchair for sometimes when you roll around? He's like, dude, once you go to the wheelchair, you're never gonna

stand again. And it's all about quality of life. And I was like, yeah, so good on her that she's putting up a good fight there. Lauren Ruffin Yeah. So they both had their own sides of the stories that they could tell. And then I had these archives from Grace Homan, who I could have written an entire book about, you could actually base a really phenomenal novel on Grace Hman's life. But her life was archived at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, and it is incredible what is in there. Her letters, her climbing journals, and her husband's. And it did make me think about, can you imagine if somebody was trying to write a book like this today? Like, what would you mind? Our emails, our texts, like, things we don't even keep. Pete Slauson Yeah. And so, you got to peruse through her journals and everything else. Why did they decide to do it? Were they trying to do something like the marathon,

young lady we talked about? Or were they just doing it because they're like, hey, we're one of those mountains people and we take mountains. Lauren Ruffin Yeah, they all had different stakes, which is also why I love this story. We're one of those mountains people and we take mountains. Yeah, they all had different stakes, which is also why I love this story. They were all really complicated, different women. Grace, whose idea was to do this, had been turned back twice on Denali before this and both times in these really sort of heroine situations. And she was the only woman on those teams both times. And she suspected it was because she was a woman that she was turned back.

But then, and some of this is all of it really, is archived as well. This like story, this heartbreaking story plays out in Grace's journals and her letters and her husband, Ben Homan's, where in 1969, Grace wanted to go on this expedition to the Himalaya to Dali Giri 1, which then was one of the hardest peaks in the Himalaya to climb. And her husband, Vin, was going a well-known Alaskan mountaineer.

And he then put Grace forward for the team. I mean, she had a ton of experience. She climbed on several continents. She had a bunch of first ascents, some of them solo, and she was a doctor, which was really helpful on these expeditions. And the team leader writes back to Vin and says that, no, Grace won't be going. In fact, she has illusions of grandeur, and she has light experience, bars her from the expedition.

And then Vin on that expedition dies in an avalanche. He never comes home from the Himalaya and Grace has this like wild survivor's guilt where she starts to think, what if I had been there? Would I have made different decisions and he wouldn't have been in that spot? What if any woman had been on that expedition? What if, what would happen on an all women's expedition? I mean, that sounds like a great way to beat the system back then. Cause since, you know, some of that sexism was going on and you, you just take all women, no one's going to kick you off the team then. I don't know maybe, but you know, still not over, not over your sex, you know,

women's. And that's what I think is so 1970 wasn't that long ago. That's pretty modern history. It feels like it was a long time ago. I guess it does. I was born in 68. Okay. 57. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling Nixon still. Yeah. What I think is amazing about that is that there's still even in 1970, the narrative was that women were physically and emotionally too weak to do this. They couldn't withstand high altitudes or savage elements or climb with carrying these

heavy loads without men's help. And everyone knew that their periods made them weaker and prone to hysteria on a monthly basis. So that's what I think also is amazing about this is these women were doing something that everybody told them was impossible. Pete Yeah. Was there fanfare behind this? Because I mean, it had to be like, I've seen that marathon, first woman around in New York marathon video like a billion times. Like I've seen it so many times over the years. Did this get news coverage? Was this a big deal or did they not promote it? Or what was the, how come more people didn't hear about this? Yeah, I think there's a couple different reasons, but no, there was only local coverage

for the most part of the climb. So- A couple chicks climbed the mountain, eh, that sort of thing. I mean, it's kind of wild that no national news covered it. What I think is interesting though is the timing. So this climb unfolded two months before August, 1970, which is when the women strike for equality, when all these women marched on Fifth Avenue

with linked arms, put second wave feminism on the map. And I think had the climb unfolded, maybe in the summer after that, it might've gotten a lot more attention, right? In the fevered days of this new movement. But the other is that sometimes these stories of failure serve to prop up whatever narrative we want to tell much better than stories of success. And so especially when you're talking about boundary break, right? We're breaking boundaries that a lot of people don't

want them to break. And so Arlene read two years after this climb about another first all-women's ascent on Denali in 1972. And it was in LA Times, a major national newspaper covered it. And what they covered though was the fact that several of the women on that expedition died and they didn't mention the survivors and they didn't mention that the women had made it to the summit. Which is wild. Pete Slauson So, they had. Anna Winkler They had. Pete Slauson Yeah. Wow.

Anna Winkler But they also weren't the first all-women's ascent. It was Arlene's trip, the year, two years before that. Pete Slauson Wow. Oh, so that second one made the year. Wow, that's unfortunate. Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, nowadays, thank God there's social media and there's a democratization where you can post videos. Was it, did the, I mean, nowadays, thank God there's social media and there's a democratization where you can post videos. Was it, did they, I mean, imagine they took some pictures, there's one on the cover of your book.

Yes, there are some. Maybe a video? Maybe? No video. What's also really interesting is this was 1970, right? I mean, we had great… Yeah, it was. Some of the cameras are like five trillion pounds.

Yeah, your camera weighs a ton. That's good. But, I mean, these were women who apparently never even called each other on the phone. Everything is just over letters. So I would have been shocked if they hauled a video camera up. Really? Yeah, that's true. I didn't... My mind farted on the concept of, yeah, they didn't have cameras. I was like, couldn't they afford iPhones? Stupid Chris. Anyway, so you tell this great story, I don't know, like nowadays you hire a PAR agent for everything and you get him to tell

your story, no matter how inane it might be. I've never called him Denali. So my PAR agent is some idiot with a mic and I don't know, pays me and I just try and I have pity for him. So you know, but yeah, it's unfortunate they weren't like asked to the White House or anything. I mean, it's kind of a momentous thing. I mean, this is dangerous stuff, you can fucking die. You're just not putting your life on the line, you know?

And then worst case scenario, your body's stuck up there like on Everest where there's people up there been up there, what, 100 plus years? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, the bodies are just now melting out that people are finding. Yeah. Come to think of it, this might be a way to get out of some debts by faking a climb to… A climb on a high altitude mountain. Where is this? Don't know, located out again, Alaska? Like to announce that I'm leaving. Anyway, as we go out, what do you hope people come away with a book? What do you hope people learn from it and anything maybe we miss?

I think that there's a couple of points, last points I want to make. One is that I invite whoever's listening to think about how many books, Indithin Air, The Wager, Endurance, like our greatest exploration and adventure stories in the literary canon, feature women. Like I could maybe name one or two. And so that is really wild to me that we have this void in the literary canon that are strong female stories.

But then the second point I wanna make is that we don't read those stories like End of the Nair and Endurance because they're male-focused stories, right? We read them because there's damn good adventure stories, which is what this one is. I mean, there's some gender stuff in it because that's just what the women were facing. It was telling them they couldn't do all this stuff. But in the end, it's just a really good adventure story. Pete Yeah. And the climbing story, if you love climbing, you love snow, I have friends, they love hiking, they love climbing. I'm just like, I'll sit over here with my bag of Doritos

and watch you guys on the video you post on Facebook. That's cute. But I, you know, people that do this, you know, I understand the same sort of thing, the mental discipline, the challenge, you know, doing something that few people have done and sometimes facing death, it's an old line from Marcus Reyes, death smiles at us, the best you can do is smile back and bring it. Anyway, probably shouldn't encourage death, but it's how I roll. Anyway, come to think of it most of my life, it is how I've rolled encouraging death. But when I start a podcast, it's safe. Although I don't know, there's probably something that will kill, maybe the mic will kill me one day, it will

turn on me with AI. Anyway, so give us your dot coms as people find out about, can find out more about you on social media, etc, etc. Kirsten Yes, I am at CassidyRandall.com. You can find my books there. I am on Substack at The Wilder Path. I am on Instagram. And you guys, I did just join TikTok because I feel like I got to figure it out. Yeah. Welcome to, yeah, the one thing you want to be careful, I'd warn people about who

you're newly joining TikTok is be careful. That thing can turn into addiction where you're just you're just like I'm gonna watch a couple TikToks before I go to bed and you're sitting there laying there with your pillow and then all of a sudden the Sun's up What the fuck happened? It is it can do that to you during COVID man It there I would wake up and the Sun would be or I wouldn't wake up I'd wait the Sun to be up and I'm like I spent four hours Swiping and you're just like just one more, it's just 30 second videos. Just one more, that's funny. And so be careful.

I'll work on avoiding that. It's one of those cults that'll pull you in and then, I love TikTok. So anyway, do we get paid for ads with them? I don't know, we should. Call the Chinese. That's a TikTok joke. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, Cassie. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. And order up her book, wherever fine books are sold. You can pre-order it now for March 4th, 2025. 30 Below, the harrowing and heroic story of the first all-women's descent of Denali. I mean these women

went after 30 below. I can't even stand 30 degrees Fahrenheit. That's freezing for me. But good for them. Anyway guys go to GoodReach.com for Chess Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com for Chess Chris Foss. Chris Foss won on the Tiktokity and all those crazy places. Be good to each other, stay safe. We'll see you next time. I might name my next