Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali by Cassidy Randall wins 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition Grand Prize
By
Jess Elliott
Posted on
November 06, 2025
Media Release | November 6, 2025 | Banff, AB
The Banff Mountain Book Competition is excited to announce the 2025 Grand Prize winner at this year’s 50th anniversary Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival.
Grace Hoeman dreamed of standing on top of Denali, the tallest peak in North America. A doctor and mountaineer in Alaska, Grace had come close to the top, only to be turned back by altitude sickness and a storm that took the lives of seven fellow climbers in one remorseless blow. Other expeditions denied her a place because of her gender, and when a letter arrived from a fellow climber in California named Arlene Blum, who’d also been barred from expeditions—unless she stayed in base camp and cooked for the men, Grace got a defiant idea: she would organize and lead the first-ever all-female ascent of the frozen Alaskan peak.
Everyone told the “Denali Damsels,” as the team called themselves, that it couldn’t be done: women were incapable of climbing mountains on their own. Men had walked on the moon; women still had not stood on the highest points on Earth. But these six women were unwilling to be limited by doubters and misogynists. They pushed past barriers in society at large, the climbing world, and their own bodies. And then, when disaster struck at the worst time on their expedition, the team’s actions would decide not only their fate, but how the world would judge them—and all women’s ability to climb and survive the fiercest mountains.
In Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali, author Cassidy Randall draws on extensive archival research and original interviews to tell an absorbing, edge-of-the-seat adventure story about this forgotten group of climbers who had the audacity to believe that women could walk alone in such extraordinary heights.
Thirty Below is a gripping book about a groundbreaking climb. In a feat of detailed journalism and propulsive storytelling, Cassidy Randall revitalizes a neglected story of boundary-breaking alpinism, tracing the first all-women’s ascent of Denali. With rich and unflinching portraits of these mountaineers, Randall shares the boldness and fallibility of humans in an extreme environment. At the same time, she shines light on the specific challenges facing this team of ambitious women in climbing, and in their professional, technical, and scientific fields. Randall illuminates the skill and grit needed for them not only to reach the summit, but to be in the mountains at all. Thirty Below is a masterful tribute to mountains as places to challenge individual and social limits, in ways both historic and intimate.
Kate Neville, 2025 Book Competition Jury
The Book Competition is an internationally recognized literary competition that celebrates mountain literature in all its forms. $29,000 CAD in cash is awarded annually with eight awards: Mountain Literature (non-fiction), Mountain Fiction and Poetry, Environmental Literature, Adventure Travel, Mountain Image, Guidebooks, Mountain Article, Climbing Literature, plus the Grand Prize selected by an international jury of writers, adventurers, and editors.
The eight category award winners are selected by our international jury from a longlist of 29 category finalists (chosen from a total of 142 submissions, from authors across 11 countries).
The 2025 Book Competition jury members are David Chambre (France), Paul Scully (UK), and Kate Neville (Canada).
Grand Prize Winner
$5,000 – Sponsored by the Alpine Club of Canada
Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali
Cassidy Randall, Abrams (USA, 2025)
See here for the full list of 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition Award winners.
This year’s popular daytime book events featured authors, photographers, and explorers from around the world, including Hamish Frost, Guy Robertson, Sonnie Trotter, Joanna Croston, Hazel Findlay, Lynn Hill, Lydia Bradey, Sarah Hueniken, Brette Harrington, Sharon Wood, Tom Bell, Jean McNeil, Jeremy Collins, Cassidy Randall, Greg Hill, and Craig Childs.
This year’s 50th anniversary Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival (November 1-9), held by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Alberta, will welcome adventurers, filmmakers, authors, and photographers from around the world for an exceptional lineup featuring 87 epic films (including World and North American premieres), plus a special Fire and Ice Symposium (November 4-5), the bustling Festival Marketplace, free talks on the Rab Stage, happy hours with live music, downtown events, exhibitions, and much more!
The Festival schedule is available to view online. Tickets and passes can be purchased at banffmountainfestival.ca or Banff Centre Box Office.
Online films will be available following the Festival from November 12-23, 2025 (available in CAN/USA only).
For more information or image requests, please contact:
Jess Elliott
Media and Communications, Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Box 1020,107 Tunnel Mountain Drive
Banff, Alberta
Canada T1L 1H5
jess_elliott@banffcentre.ca
About Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival: Created 50 years ago, Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival has become the premier event of its kind in the world. The nine-day Festival hosted by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Canada, showcases the world’s best films, books and photographs on mountain subjects – climbing, culture, environment and natural history, exploration and adventure, wildlife, and sport – and attracts the biggest names in mountaineering, adventure filmmaking, and explorers as presenters and speakers. An international jury will also award over $40,000 in prizes for films and books submitted to this year’s Festival competitions. banffmountainfestival.ca
Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival Sponsors: The 2025 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival Presenting Sponsors are Rab and Banff and Lake Louise Tourism. The Festival is also supported by YETI, Oboz Footwear, World Expeditions, The Lake Louise Ski Resort, Grangers, SLY Foods, Duer, Alpine Club of Canada, Arc’teryx, Durston, Wild Life Distillery, Wild Rose Brewery, and KORE.
About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity: Founded in 1933, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become the global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines. From our home on Treaty 7 territory in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus – artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences – to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca