Clouds from Both Sides

Julie Tullis was, in her lifetime, Britain's leading female mountaineer. She was the first British woman to climb an 8,000-metre peak – Broad Peak in 1984 – and summited a second, K2, in 1986 before dying in a storm on the descent. She spent her childhood in post-war London and, when not travelling the world to climb, lived with her husband Terry and children in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, teaching climbing to the disadvantaged and children with special needs on the southern sandstone. Julie trained to black belt standard in both judo and aikido, and as well as being a high-altitude mountaineer, she worked as a filmmaker alongside Austrian climber Kurt Diemberger, with whom she climbed K2 on 4 August 1986.