Dorothy Pilley Richards


Dorothy Pilley Richards was a prominent mountaineer. She began climbing in Wales and joined the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, later helping found The Pinnacle Club in 1921.
In the 1920s, she climbed extensively in the Alps, Britain, and North America after her marriage to educator, literary critic, and rhetorician Ivor Armstrong Richards.
In 1928, she made the celebrated first ascent of the north north west ridge of the Dent Blanche, with Joseph Georges, Antoine Georges and her husband, which she described in her well-regarded memoir, Climbing Days.
Pilley’s great-great-nephew Dan Richards has written a biography of her life, published Faber in 2016 and also called Climbing Days.

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