The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley, is the story of Barbara Washburn's adventures by circumstance. She never set out to become a mountaineering pioneer, but she wasn't satisfied to be a stay-at-home wife, either. She defied social conventions in 1947 to become the first woman to climb McKinley, and accompanied her husband, Bradford Washburn, on other expeditions to Alaska, the Grand Canyon and Mt. Everest.