Amongst a gathering of keen mountaineers this fabulous new book was officially launched last Wednesday 9 September at the Tararua Tramping Club.
Great Hearts by Hazel Phillips (MUP) is a landmark work of recovery, reclamation, and narrative repair — a book that pulls thirty pioneering women climbers out of the footnotes of New Zealand mountaineering history and places them firmly at the centre of the story. It is meticulously researched, emotionally resonant, and formally inventive, blending archival scholarship with critical fabulation — a method that allows Phillips to reconstruct the interior lives of women whose voices were erased from the historical record.
This is the first comprehensive, deeply researched account of New Zealand’s early women mountaineers — figures who climbed boldly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but were largely omitted from the official alpine canon. Phillips restores their achievements with vivid storytelling, archival detail, and a feminist lens that challenges the patriarchal frameworks of traditional mountaineering literature.
Hazel Phillips is a journalist, mountaineer, and writer whose work explores the intersection of adventure, gender, and historical erasure. She has spent over a decade researching women climbers, confronting the gaps and silences in the archive and developing a methodology that blends fact with carefully anchored imaginative reconstruction.
She's written two previous books on the outdors. That includes Solo: Backcountry Adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022) — A hybrid memoir/history of Phillips’ three years of largely solo tramping across New Zealand, interwoven with accounts of historic climbers and feminist reflections on the outdoor world. Also, Fire & Ice: Secrets, Histories, Treasures and Mysteries of Tongariro National Park (Massey University Press, 2025) - A cultural, geological, and historical exploration of Tongariro National Park.
Phillips challenges the traditional mountaineering canon — a body of literature historically written by and for men — and exposes how women’s achievements were minimized, dismissed, or omitted. She notes that women were climbing well before the turn of the 20th century, but because their exploits didn’t fit the “approved” narrative of conquest, they were left out.
The book includes 30 biographical chapters on early women climbers. There's also plenty of archival research from newspapers, alpine club records, and personal papers.
A range of fictive vignettes reconstruct the climbers’ interiority giving you an insight into who they were. Many were society ladies and wrote in magazines like the New Zealand Mail and NZ Illustrated. They were somewhat famous as mountain guides and mountaineers in their own right. Howver, many more faded away once married, sadly, to become part-time actors in their husband's lives. Theirs disolved away.
There is a strong degree of social history of gender, empire, and outdoor culture amongst these pages that runs as a paralel narative. And ther is a treasure trove of photographs and illustrations that really bring the era to life.
Phillips uses Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation to fill archival gaps without abandoning historical accuracy.
In this book you'll meet some fascinating and determined women. Such as Margaret Lorimer - headmistress of Nelson College for Girls and one of the most accomplished early women climbers. She was described in 1905 as “a chubby, comely, kindly-dispositioned little woman” — a patronising label she subverted through her mountaineering prowess.
However, don't underestimate her! Nicknamed “The Mighty Atom” for her energy and skill. Phillips’ portrait of Lorimer is one of intellectual brilliance, physical courage, and quiet defiance. Born in Scotland; emigrated to NZ at age fiveEarned an MA from Canterbury CollegeSigned the 1892 suffrage petition. Climbed extensively, including the Matterhorn.
Lorimer is the star of the Mount Cook chapters of Phillips' book — a headmistress, scholar, suffragist, and one of the most technically skilled climbers of her era.Her connection to Aoraki and the Hermitage. She made repeated climbing trips to the region. She trained with Peter Graham, who admired her speed and precision.She became part of the Hermitage’s social fabric — known for her wit, her stamina, and her refusal to be patronised. Phillips quotes contemporary descriptions of Lorimer as “tiny, nimble-footed, and quick-moving,” a phrase that captures both her physicality and the era’s tendency to infantilise accomplished women.
Or, there's Anna von Lendenfeld, a climber whose archival presence is almost spectral — she participated in the first ascent of Hochstetter Dome in 1883, yet left no written account. Phillips uses creative scholarship to reconstruct her experience, demonstrating how women’s voices were systematically excluded from official records.
Then there's Lydia Birch - One of the earliest recorded women climbers in New Zealand. She was part of the first party to climb Te Heu Heu, the northern peak of Mt Ruapehu in the late 1800's. Her presence in the alpine world predates many of the “official” milestones traditionally credited to male climbers.
Fanny Fantham who ascended Fantham’s Peak on Mt Taranaki (1800's) — a climb so significant that the peak now bears her name. Phillips highlights how Fantham’s achievement was quietly acknowledged geographically but not narratively.
Mary Murray-Aynsley & Eleanor Joachim both appear in early climbing photographs alongside Lorimer and guide Peter Graham. Their stories illustrate the collaborative nature of early women’s climbing and the social networks that supported their alpine ambitions.
Great Hearts is both a historical correction and a literary achievement. It is essential reading for anyone interested in New Zealand history, feminist historiography, mountaineering culture and adventure writing.
Phillips argues that the Mount Cook region was a crucible for women’s alpine achievement because it had professional guides willing to train women and an infrastructure (the Hermitage) that made long stays possible.It attracted international climbers, exposing local women to global techniques. It fostered a community where women could be seen, photographed, and remembered — even if later histories erased them. Her chapters on Aoraki are among the book’s most vivid, because they show women not as isolated anomalies but as part of a thriving alpine culture.
Phillips’ work ensures that these women — once relegated to margins — now stand where they always belonged: at the summit. The “first ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook” are one of the most compelling threads in Great Hearts — a constellation of early women climbers whose lives intersected with the mountain, the Hermitage Hotel, and the emerging alpine culture of the early 20th century.
Phillips’ work ensures that these women — once relegated to margins — now stand where they always belonged: at the summit. The “first ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook” are one of the most compelling threads in Great Hearts — a constellation of early women climbers whose lives intersected with the mountain, the Hermitage Hotel, and the emerging alpine culture of the early 20th century.
Phillips treats Aoraki not just as a peak but as a social world, a place where gender norms were renegotiated, where women carved out space for themselves in a landscape that was both physically and culturally forbidding.
She gently frames Aoraki as a site of paradox: a mountain mythologised as masculine — conquest, heroism, endurance — yet one that quietly hosted some of the earliest and boldest women climbers in the country. These women were not peripheral visitors. They were central figures in the development of the region’s climbing culture, often staying for long periods at the Hermitage, training with guides, and forming networks of skill and mentorship. Aoraki becomes, in Phillips’ telling, a place where women could temporarily step outside Victorian and Edwardian constraints. The mountain offered a kind of social permission: once you were roped up, competence mattered more than gender.
And part of that overall strory was, of course, The Hermitage. In its early timber incarnations it was more than a hotel. It was a staging ground, a classroom, a gossip mill, and a refuge. Phillips describes it as a “liminal space,” where women could move between domestic expectations and alpine ambition. Why the Hermitage mattered. It was the base for the Mount Cook Guides, including Peter Graham and Jack Adamson, who trained and supported many early women climbers. It provided long-term accommodation, allowing women to stay for weeks or months — something rare for women travellers at the time. It created a mixed-gender alpine community, where women could observe, learn, and participate in climbing culture.
Phillips subtly reframes Aoraki as a site of feminist possibility. The mountain becomes a place where women could test themselves physically, It was a space where competence trumped gender. And a community where women supported one another. A landscape that resisted patriarchal narratives of “conquest”. She writes that the women of Aoraki “climbed not to conquer but to belong,” a line that encapsulates her entire project.
She gently frames Aoraki as a site of paradox: a mountain mythologised as masculine — conquest, heroism, endurance — yet one that quietly hosted some of the earliest and boldest women climbers in the country. These women were not peripheral visitors. They were central figures in the development of the region’s climbing culture, often staying for long periods at the Hermitage, training with guides, and forming networks of skill and mentorship. Aoraki becomes, in Phillips’ telling, a place where women could temporarily step outside Victorian and Edwardian constraints. The mountain offered a kind of social permission: once you were roped up, competence mattered more than gender.
And part of that overall strory was, of course, The Hermitage. In its early timber incarnations it was more than a hotel. It was a staging ground, a classroom, a gossip mill, and a refuge. Phillips describes it as a “liminal space,” where women could move between domestic expectations and alpine ambition. Why the Hermitage mattered. It was the base for the Mount Cook Guides, including Peter Graham and Jack Adamson, who trained and supported many early women climbers. It provided long-term accommodation, allowing women to stay for weeks or months — something rare for women travellers at the time. It created a mixed-gender alpine community, where women could observe, learn, and participate in climbing culture.
Phillips subtly reframes Aoraki as a site of feminist possibility. The mountain becomes a place where women could test themselves physically, It was a space where competence trumped gender. And a community where women supported one another. A landscape that resisted patriarchal narratives of “conquest”. She writes that the women of Aoraki “climbed not to conquer but to belong,” a line that encapsulates her entire project.
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