Lise Wortley retraces the footsteps of historical women explorers whose achievements have long been overlooked. To fully immerse herself in their experiences, she replicates the clothing and equipment used over a century ago, avoiding modern gear to see the world as they did. Through these journeys, she shines a light on their remarkable stories and brings their legacies back into focus.
Lise Wortley retraces the footsteps of historical women explorers whose achievements have long been overlooked. To fully immerse herself in their experiences, she replicates the clothing and equipment used over a century ago, avoiding modern gear to see the world as they did. Through these journeys, she shines a light on their remarkable stories and brings their legacies back into focus.
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Shelby Stanger:
If you're a gearhead, you know that outdoor equipment has evolved greatly over the years. There are ultralight backpacks that weigh virtually nothing, water bottles that keep your drink cold or hot for days, and the most waterproof raincoats you've worn. Lise Wortley chooses not to use any of it. No nylon, no Gore-Tex, no crampons. Instead, Lise's expeditions retrace the footsteps of historical women explorers whose achievements have been overlooked.
Lise Wortley:
I was reading the book and there's this part in it where she sleeps in her yak wool coat on a mountain pass in the snow. And I was thinking, how do you do that if you don't have a modern-day puffer jacket or a sleeping bag to keep you from freezing to death? And that's what started it. And I would think, well, I'm never going to understand what she went through or how she actually did this, and the challenges she faced if I was in modern-day clothing, like I'm going to have to wear what she wore.
Shelby Stanger:
Before each journey. Lise absorbs all the information she can find about these women. She reads their journals and researches their roots, equipment they used and clothes they wore. Then she sources the most authentic, historically accurate pieces to wear on the trail, from hobnail boots to vintage underwear. Replicating the clothing and equipment from more than 100 years ago allows Lise to experience the adventure through the eyes of these remarkable women and raise awareness about their accomplishments.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
Lise Wortley, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have one of the most exciting wild ideas I've heard in a very long time. So I found you on Instagram and I was like, who is this girl? You recreate famous adventures by historical women, and the clothes they would've worn at the time, like hundreds of years ago or in the 1800s. You just seem like a badass. How do you introduce yourself and your wild idea to people who just haven't heard of you before?
Lise Wortley:
I love that intro. Thank you. I don't know, usually I just say I'm an accidental adventurer, but yours is a lot better than that.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, I want to hear how you became an accidental adventurer. So when you grew up, and you're in England right now, did you grow up adventurous? Were you an outdoorsy kid?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, I was really outdoorsy, actually. I was born in London, but then my parents moved out when I was about three into literally the middle of nowhere. It couldn't have been more different, and I was like this wild child, and I just used to run around the garden, feral little creature, and it was amazing. I had an amazing childhood, and then, I've actually been thinking about this a lot recently. I definitely lost that connection when I was a teenager and moved to the city. So yeah, I grew up in the outdoors and then I really lost it for a bit. But when I was about 27, I got back into walking and back into just being in the outdoors and understanding how good it was for my mental health.
Shelby Stanger:
I want to dive into this because I too had a little bit of a mental awakening, let's say, at around 29, 27 to 29. It's a pretty pivotal age for a young woman, and decided that I wanted to quit my job and go into nature and write about adventure. So at 27, you must have had some epiphany that was like, I want to go dress up like people from the 1800s and recreate their adventures. That's a really wild, specific idea. How did it come to you?
Lise Wortley:
So it actually started a lot earlier than that. So when I was in my early teens, so 15, 16, I read a book by a woman adventurer called Alexandra David-Néel, and I could go on about her forever.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me about her really quickly.
Lise Wortley:
She was this really amazing woman, so she was French. And so 1910, she set off on this 14-year journey through Asia from Europe, which women just didn't do things like that at the time. She left her husband behind, went off on this journey. She was the first Western woman to meet the Dalai Lama. She learned Tibetan. She lived in a cave for two years, just meditating. And yeah, she was just this incredible woman and I'd never heard of her. And I was reading this book, why was I not taught about her at school? Who is this incredible woman? She's so inspiring. And she slept on freezing mountain passes and walked for months on end through the mountains, and she was just incredible. So I read this book when I was 16 and I had this idea that I would follow in her footsteps because everyone I asked was like, I've never heard of her.
I don't know who she is. I was like, but she's amazing. Look, she did all this stuff. It was so inspiring and brave to do all that back then. And then I think life, like I said, just got in the way. I moved to the city. I started having a really difficult time with my mental health. I was having really bad panic attacks. I constantly had to stop going to work, for a few months at one point. And then eventually after all that, I went back to this book when I started feeling a bit better and reread it.
Shelby Stanger:
In her 20s, Lise struggled with severe panic attacks and anxiety, but she found that being in nature was helpful for her mental health. When she was 27, she decided to finally pursue her dream of following in Alexandra David-Néel's footsteps. Lise set her sights on recreating Alexandra's trek as closely as possible, from Lochin, India, to the base camp of a nearby mountain. Though she hired a local guide and a camera woman to accompany her, Lise was determined that everything else would be historically accurate.
So your first big idea was to go trace Alexandra David Néel's journey into India. But did you also, I mean, I know a big part of your adventures is you go back and you dress like the women and what they would've worn during this time. And she was 1910, you said?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, that's when she started. So yeah, the other wild idea was doing it in what she had at the time.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get this idea? No one does this. It's like, did you take acting school? Were you interested in costume?
Lise Wortley:
No. People always say, are you pretending to be the person? I'm like, no, no, I'm not. What happened was I was reading the book and there's this part in it where she sleeps in her yak wool coat on a mountain pass in the snow all night long. And I was thinking, how do you do that if you don't have a modern day puffer jacket or a sleeping bag to keep you from freezing to death? And that's what started it. And I would think, well, I'm never going to understand what she went through or how she actually did this, and the challenges she faced if I was in modern day clothing, I'm going to have to wear what she wore.
And the other thing that I noticed was because they were battling to be taken seriously, as seriously as the male adventurers at the time, they would never really write about how they truly felt like if they were scared or if they were cold, or if they just didn't want to be there anymore. So I thought actually that would be a really good way to understand a bit more about how they maybe really would've felt if I was in the old stuff. So that's how it started.
Shelby Stanger:
What was this first trip like? Take me back. What year was this?
Lise Wortley:
2017.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay.
Lise Wortley:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
So you're 27 years old, or 28 years old, probably by this time. And you go and what do you wear? How do you get the clothes, and what's it like?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, so finding the clothes is actually it's a lot of research. So I see what they mention they have in the book and then see if I can get the actual stuff from the time on vintage websites, things like that. If I can't find the actual things, then I'll try and get them made or something like that. So it's just a lot of research, finding the stuff. Like a yak wool coat, I had to get a contact that I had in India to pick that up because it was like a traditional one. So yeah, it was a lot of muddling all things together. And then I really wanted to go all the way. So obviously she would never talk about underwear in the book, but it's just finding out what underwear looked like in 1910, what did they have? What was it like? That kind of thing. So I made sure everything-
Shelby Stanger:
What did they have?
Lise Wortley:
So rocket bras and things like that, corsets.
Shelby Stanger:
What's a rocket bra?
Lise Wortley:
Well, it's like a pointy bra.
Shelby Stanger:
Ow.
Lise Wortley:
And then a lot of all-in-one things.
Shelby Stanger:
What do you mean all-in-one things?
Lise Wortley:
How you describe them?
Shelby Stanger:
Like a jumper? Like a bodysuit?
Lise Wortley:
Like shorts and a blouse, but all together, I think they call them combinations actually, it's just sprung to my mind.
Shelby Stanger:
Like a jumper, like a romper, but an uncomfortable romper.
Lise Wortley:
I mean, they're not that uncomfortable.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, okay.
Lise Wortley:
And I'm quite lucky in the sense that a lot of women who went to the mountains, if they had to wear corsets, they were like, well, I'm not wearing that up the mountain. So they just take them off. I think a corset up the mountain's not good. But yeah, so it's researching all this stuff that they would've had that they don't mention, and then just piecing it all together. And then the shoes, things like that, working out what they would've had. So hobnail boots, mainly.
Shelby Stanger:
Hobnail boots?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, so they're-
Shelby Stanger:
So sorry. I do not know this.
Lise Wortley:
Leather boots. And then they've got nails in the bottom for grip. So that's what they all wore in the 18 and early 1900s. Just leather boots with metal nails in the bottom.
Shelby Stanger:
And you wore those?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, I wore those, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
And how many miles did you walk in these shoes?
Lise Wortley:
I can't remember how far we went on that trip. That was a long way. I think it was-
Shelby Stanger:
Hours? Quarters?
Lise Wortley:
Like eight or nine a day.
Shelby Stanger:
For how many days?
Lise Wortley:
That was a month, that trip.
Shelby Stanger:
Sorry, if you're listening to this, my mouth is wide open. So you walked in these boots with nails in them that were uncomfortable, itchy underwear and whatever it was.
Lise Wortley:
So itchy.
Shelby Stanger:
A yak coat.
Lise Wortley:
It was so itchy.
Shelby Stanger:
It sounds awful. And you did nine hours a day?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, because the thing, and I go a bit slow as well, because of the shoes, so it's surprising, it's not comfortable, and they're not like normal shoes, but you would be surprised how they hold up in situations like that.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have any stories from that trip that really stand out? Like a time that there was so much awe, or you were so scared, or it all fell into place?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah. Oh, gosh, there was so many. So the aim was to get to Mount Kanchenjunga base camp. So that's the third-highest peak in the world. And it's in this northern bit of Sikkim. It's very remote. It's quite hard to get there because you need so many visas. So there's not many tourists. There's hardly anyone around, but it's this really sacred mountain. And Jangu, who was our guide, was of the Lepcha community descent. So they're the indigenous people that lived in this part of India, and they see the mountain as this guardian deity, and it's very important to them. So we got to the top after a lot of trouble. So altitude sickness, all this stuff had happened, and we got there and we were just at this moment of the trip where it was just absolutely incredible to be staring at this mountain that's the third highest in the world, so special and so spiritual. And Jangu actually changed into her traditional dress and did a prayer for her late father. And it was just this moment I'll never forget. It was amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
So on this trip, you basically walked nine hours a day for about a month at over 20,000 feet?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah. I mean, I can't remember the highest we went, well, I'm a bit British, so we say meters, but 5,500 meters, I don't know how many feet that is.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. Yeah. So your base camp is 5,500 meters, which is about 18,000 plus feet.
Lise Wortley:
Yeah. Didn't feel good. Headaches, feeling really sick, and you're trying to walk, but you have absolutely no energy. And then I'm in all the old itchy stuff on top of that, there's no comfort.
Shelby Stanger:
Were you worried about slipping?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, so I've actually got a lot more used to these boots and you can trust them. And interestingly, they're really bad on manmade materials, but when they're on rock or soil or things like that, they're actually a lot better. So you learn to trust them. But yeah, at first you're moving like a penguin, really slowly and just trying really hard not to twist an ankle.
Shelby Stanger:
In addition to dressing like Alexandra on the trek, Lise and her group ate like her too. This meant stopping at the homes of people they met along the way, eating meals like curries and breads. These moments of connection were a welcome break from the challenges they faced on their trek, like extremely low temperatures and altitude sickness. Over the course of a month, the group hiked roughly 108 miles across snowy, rocky landscapes to reach their destination.
After that first trip, how did you change?
Lise Wortley:
Well, people always ask me that. And actually, I remember coming back from that trip and I thought, well, I've done that now, I'm going to feel better. I'm going to be really brave and I'm not going to be anxious. And it was the complete opposite. I felt like a tiny little wreck. It was awful. And I think because I'd built up so much and I thought, well, if I can go and do that, then why would I panic over things anymore? And it was totally the opposite. And actually over all this time, I've just learned that it's not a quick fix and potentially it's something that I'll live with forever. But it had been years of feeling bad, and I think I just thought this would change me and make me really confident and it didn't. But now I look back and I'm like, actually, everything I've done has definitely done that.
It's just taken time to build up. And now I'm very confident and I can stand on a stage and talk to lots of people and things like that, but I would not have been able to do after that first trip. So it was interesting coming back because actually when I was on the trip and I was in the wild and I was leading this group of people, I was okay and I was quite confident. But then it was when I got back home, I just went into a little shell again. So yeah, interestingly, it didn't do what I hoped it would, but then I started just researching. Because it was, I think, a way to make myself feel better. And I just really enjoyed these stories and it gave me a lot of hope, I guess, that these women had been doing these things.
Shelby Stanger:
When Lise returned from India, she started keeping a spreadsheet of women whose paths she could retrace. Her list includes more than 100 writers, mountaineers, and even a pirate queen from the 1800s. These women traveled all over the world, but Lise decided that for her next trip, she wanted to stay closer to home.
Lise Wortley follows the paths of historical women explorers whose accomplishments have been largely forgotten. She calls this project Woman with Altitude. Lise did her first trek in 2017. It followed the root of an explorer named Alexandra David-Néel, who hiked through Central Asia in the early 20th century. For her next adventure, she took inspiration from the writer, Nan Shepherd.
After that first trip, how soon did you do the next one?
Lise Wortley:
So there was Nan Shepherd's book that I read called The Living Mountain, and it's actually got quite famous in the UK now, but when she originally wrote it in the 1940s, no one would publish it. So she chucked it in a drawer for 30 years, and it's now celebrated as the most incredible book ever written on British landscape and nature. And she just lived in the Cairngorms, which is a big mountain range in Scotland, but she just walked across every part of it basically, and then wrote about it. But she wrote it in this really beautiful, philosophical way. And it was different to the other books at the time because it wasn't about getting to the top of the mountain. It was about experiencing the whole of the mountain and its ecosystem rather than just rushing to the top and trying to conquer it. So obviously it wasn't published at the time, but now it's just really celebrated. So that was the second trip.
Shelby Stanger:
What were you wearing? What was a scary moment? And what was a highlight?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, so that one was, that was 1940s she wrote that, so I head to toe dressed in tweed with my big boots again. Yeah, just wandered around. And I very naively thought that it was June, so the weather would be lovely. And I got there, and obviously it's Scotland, the high mountains, it was just sideways rain. So I just spent about five days cowering behind a rock in my really old 1940s tent thinking, what am I doing? Why am I here? For actually doing those things, you really understand a place more. And that's when I started to really feel this connection with nature through the clothing. This was afterwards. This wasn't while I was there soaking wet behind the rock.
Shelby Stanger:
So your 1940s tent did not hold up?
Lise Wortley:
Oh, no. No, no, no.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you find a 1940s tent?
Lise Wortley:
So interestingly, 1940s and '30s and to today, you can find things quite easily because people are quite into wartime, 1940s, 1950s. There's a lot of stuff that's been kept, whereas before then you do really struggle. So actually this one was quite interesting because I found all this stuff from the 1940s. It was actually from the time. So yeah, so I just bought them off people that collect it, really.
Shelby Stanger:
And you just find them on eBay or Facebook marketplace?
Lise Wortley:
EBay, and there's specialist websites and things like that where you can get stuff from certain areas. Yeah, there's a big community of people that love the old stuff, especially old school underwear. Now, this sounds weird, but one of the women who makes this underwear, she makes replicas of Edwardian stuff. She has an eight-month waiting list. You have to wait for this stuff. It's really popular. I never knew that before.
Shelby Stanger:
I imagine people do photo shoots in this underwear.
Lise Wortley:
It's so funny.
Shelby Stanger:
It doesn't sound that surprising to me, but I'm guessing they're not going and recreating expeditions in this.
Lise Wortley:
No, they just like the clothes.
Shelby Stanger:
Anyway, what's some of the craziest gear you've had to carry?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, the wooden backpack was probably, this was my first trip, and I did mention earlier it was quite haphazard the way I organized it. So I didn't realize at the time when I had my budget that actually vintage rucksacks from 1910, the frame, that you could still buy, they were like 3,000, 4,000 pounds. So I just tried to build my own, basically. But I ended up using an old chair that I found, so I rebuilt it, but with the chair, and it still looked a little bit like a chair, but it was made of the same material and looked pretty similar to the ones that I was looking at online. So yeah, it was a big wooden thing with a big basket. But yeah, essentially backpacks used to be wooden.
Shelby Stanger:
Lise has gone to extraordinary lengths for historical authenticity. In addition to building her own wooden backpack, and scouring the internet for 19th century-style underwear, Lise has had to source some hard to find items. When finding the item is impossible, making a replica is the next best option. In fact, Lise's mom made her a wool dress and bonnet for her most recent project, a climb up Mount Blanc in Europe.
Tell me a little bit about Mount Blanc, because I was in Switzerland a couple of years ago, and I've seen those mountains and they're stunning. Tell me who this woman is and what year she did it.
Lise Wortley:
So she's called Henriette d'Angeville. My French accent's awful, but she did it in 1838, and there had been a woman that went up 30 years before, but she was carried to the summit. So Henriette wanted to be the first woman to walk up herself.
Shelby Stanger:
What was it like to climb Mount Blanc in these... What do you call the boots again?
Lise Wortley:
The hobnail boots.
Shelby Stanger:
Hobnail boots.
Lise Wortley:
It was interesting because a lot of my trips have been quite remote and I've been on my own a lot, or the group I've been with, it's just been us, and I totally didn't realize how busy Chamonix is, and Mount Blanc is so busy. There were people everywhere. And I think one big part of it was actually stepping out in this clothing and knowing that everyone's going to be staring and everyone's going to be wondering what you're doing. And that I actually found harder than the idea that I had to climb up to the top of Mount Blanc.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, it'd be like going to Yosemite dressing like John Muir, but you're not wearing jeans.
Lise Wortley:
And I mean, this outfit was quite something.
Shelby Stanger:
What were you wearing?
Lise Wortley:
It wasn't like the others. This one was, I mean, she made it herself. It was from 1838. It was a huge woolen dress that she had, with a bonnet, a massive bonnet of the same material, so it matched. And then underneath, because back then women weren't supposed to wear trousers so it was a time where if a woman wore trousers out in public, she'd get harassed and shouted at, so they would wear them underneath the dress. So it makes it balloon even more so I had these big woolen trousers, big woolen dress, and then the hobnail boots, a huge bonnet, and a big shawl, and people would just stare and then I'd be like, "Hello." And then they'd smile and then I'd explain the project. But yeah, I just didn't realize how many people would be there, I guess. So that was the first challenge was overcoming that and that point where you're so tired, you've been walking all day, and then someone else, and they're just being friendly asking what you're doing, but all you want to do is just sit down and have a sip of water.
Shelby Stanger:
They probably thought you're in a religious cult, or they weren't sure.
Lise Wortley:
Yeah, probably.
Shelby Stanger:
That's what I would've thought. Just being honest.
Lise Wortley:
And it's an unusual outfit that one, because there weren't outdoor clothing for women back then. She didn't have anything to base it on, so she literally just made it herself, which is why it was quite unusual.
Shelby Stanger:
And so you did it in these clothes?
Lise Wortley:
Well, we got to the second hop because a storm came, which is why we are going to try again this year, in four months.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing. This summer you're going to go to Mount Blanc and try it again?
Lise Wortley:
Yes. So basically we took a risk and went in September last year because I wanted to summit on the same day that she did. So yeah, we tried to do it in September and summit on the same day, September the fourth. But yeah, it's really stormy at that time of year, and it was still so hot, so there was a lot of rock fall. So we had a lot of issues when we first got there. We couldn't go up because there was so much rock fall because now it's warmer, the permafrost is starting to melt. So that's this really ancient layer of ice that holds a lot of the rocks in place. It's starting to melt, so these huge rocks fall, and it just makes it so dangerous.
So we had a few days where we couldn't go because of that, and then we got a little window, but then a storm came and we were halfway up. So you have to turn around and because in the old stuff, I take even longer. So there was no way that I was going to get up and down in time, and it's still really a dangerous mountain. I think four people actually died the day after we came down. So yeah, you still have to be really, really careful. So yeah, we'll see.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you take some modern safety equipment just in case?
Lise Wortley:
Yeah. So one of my rules for Mont Blanc was that I had to... So I think they had a lot of people trying to climb it for charity and doing it in costumes and things like that. So they brought this rule in where you weren't allowed to climb it in anything like that. So I spent a long time trying to explain to them how this was different, and eventually I was allowed to do it, but as long as I took modern stuff with me in case. So actually everything that was in my backpack was just spare modern stuff, which made it even heavier. So Henriette was famous for taking all this stuff with her. Well, she had six porters, so they took 26 roast chickens, 18 bottles of wine, all this stuff. And people were like, are you going to take that? I was like, "No, I've got a backpack full of hiking boots. I can't take all that as well."
Shelby Stanger:
While today's equipment is certainly safer, the antique garb helps Lise connect to the women she's emulating. Plus, she's gained a lot from leaving behind modern technology. Over the years, she's learned so much about the women who inspire her trips and about herself. Lise's anxiety used to make her scared to be alone in the wilderness, but now as she finds a sense of peace in taking a slower approach. She's adopted Nan Shepard's philosophy of being present in nature rather than trying to conquer it.
Do you have a favorite expedition you've done?
Lise Wortley:
Oh, that's a hard question. I actually always go back to that Nan Shepard one because it taught me so much. One thing she says in the book is how walking in the mountains taught her to just be, and that's how I felt after that, I think because I don't have modern stuff and I didn't really have anything to do but just stare around. So it really taught me to just really slow down and just sit and that's fine to not be doing something. So it taught me a lot, actually, that one.
Shelby Stanger:
You've been doing this now for seven years. How has this project changed you?
Lise Wortley:
Oh, wow. Yeah, it's definitely changed me in a lot of ways. And it's only now, I think, where I feel more like myself and I feel more like, what if I hadn't started this? What sort of person would I be? And would I have ever gotten over that anxiety and would I still be in that awful space I was in? So I feel very grateful that I've got this, and it's given me a purpose, and I'm definitely a totally different person. So yeah, it's just totally changed my life, I guess. Sounds a bit cheesy.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have anything else on the horizon after that, that you're eyeing?
Lise Wortley:
I mean, there's so many. Yeah, it's actually the 130th anniversary this year of the first woman who cycled around the world called Annie Londonderry. And she started in America, and yeah, obviously a bike with no gears. She was just on it in her corset, her dress, and just took one little suitcase with her that she put on the handlebars and off she went. So I'd love to do something to commemorate her this year, but I don't know. I'll have to think about it. After Mont Blanc, I can't think about two at once. It's too much.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that Lise is raising awareness about the incredible women adventurers we may have never known about before. Lise is currently on Mont Blanc, and I can't wait to hear about her second attempt. You can get updates on her Instagram @woman_with_altitude, that's Woman with Altitude. You can also learn more about her past treks on womanwithaltitude.com.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mochila and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show. Take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.