"... this woman, now nearly sixty, with graying hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was a monster of persistence. She was determined to become the first known human to ascend the summit of the forbidding , which she hoped would prove to be the highest in the , the "apex of America." And so she went on to reach Huascarán's summit on her sixth onslaught. Her achievement was heralded by ' as "one of the most remarkable feats in the history of mountain-climbing." Upon her death at eighty-four, the ' called her the most famous of all women mountain climbers."