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anecdote selv ed ge.org at that point) describes a particularly hair-raising winter traverse in which her party were climbing in the dark with only one lantern between them, no food and only a little brandy, before resting for the night in a snow cave: “…it was a new experience but to me a most enjoyable one.” What she does not mention is that she actually lost two toes to frostbite.
And so to the skirts. There can be little doubt from the range of photographic evidence that long skirts were worn successfully by many women who participated at some level on the mountains. They were able to stride, step up and stretch around the obstacles of the rock and snow in such a way that would have been impossible had the skirts not allowed considerable movement. Modern Western expectations of comfort and ease of movement in dress cannot be applied to those expectations of the 19th century. Just because women wore the skirts, however, does not mean that they did not make some minor adjustments: and numerous techniques were employed whereby the skirt could be altered temporarily to accommodate a particular requirement.
One such strategy, revealed in many surviving images of women on the mountainside, was simply to loop the hem of the skirt up and secure it to a number of buttons around the skirt creating a swagged effect. A similar technique to the looping of the skirt that was also widely in use in the 1860s was that of raising the skirt internally through a series of tapes and metal rings, much like a roman blind. Thus the wearer could raise and lower the hem of their skirt as desired depending on terrain and company! Inventiveness was key. Meta Brevoort mastered the technique of unlooping her looped skirts with her ice axe or Alpenstock if strangers were seen approaching.
As the 19th century drew to a close and women began to experiment with more radical clothing for sports, the skirt retained its importance, bound up as it was with important contemporary notions of femininity and taste. The noted climber Elizabeth Le Blond, first
