Elizabeth Stark (explorer)

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery had a show called On Top Of The World from 2002-2003 that included pictures of Stark and the expedition team.

In 1987 she became a Professor of audiology and speech sciences at Purdue University in Indiana.

She and Monica Jackson wrote the book Tents in the Clouds: the first women’s Himalayan expedition in 1957 about the adventure.

The Ladies's Scottish Climbing Club had not been to the Himalayas. It was reported that the group studied a map of the mountain ranges and someone said that the area of the Langtang and the Jugal Himal was not well known. Stark became a member of what was claimed as the "first non-male expedition" to scale the Jugal Himal in the Himalayas in 1955 although this ignored the male sherpas who were a vital part of the expedition. The expedition was funded by Life magazine and Collins the publisher. She climbed the Jugal Himal with Monica Jackson and Evelyn McNicol, although McNicol had to stay at base camp due to sickness. They managed to get to the previously unmapped Phurbal Chyachumbu glacier and made it to the unclimbed peak on the frontier of Nepal and Tibet. They named it Gyalgen Peak, after their lead Sherpa, Mingma Gualgen. The Gyalgen or Gyalzen or Leonpo Gang East peak is on the border of the Nepalese Bagmati Province and China and it is 6151 m / 20180 feet high.

She became a climber and in 1954 she took part in an early expedition to the Lyngen Peninsula in Norway. The other mountaineers from the Ladies' Scottish Climbing Club were Cynthia Marr, Evelyn Camress (later McNicol) and Elma Wrench.

Elizabeth "Betty" Stark or Rachel Stark (17 September 1923 – 2000) was a British speech therapist and mountaineer. She climbed the Jugal Himal during the first all-female expedition to the Himalayas in 1955. She became an expert in audiology and speech sciences and she was a professor at Purdue University.