No one will bother to wash higher up the mountain, where every drop of water must be melted from snow. Men and women who have known each other for only days will share cramped tents. Parmenter's instruction in the fine art of mountain peeing is, in fact, her first step in helping Blum up the mountain. It sounds funny, but for women, it's serious business. Squatting with a bare bottom is uncomfortable and dangerous on the mountain's icy slopes.
Skin quickly freezes in sub-zero windchill.
And more than a few climbers have fallen to their deaths with their pants around their ankles. Parmenter uses a plastic funnel to relieve herself standing up. I have no shame. But it's not always easy to be just one of the boys. In 1995, she was abandoned by her three male partners in Argentina on Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas.