“It’s a famous person, the most famous Polish alpinist. She lived in Plungė, she was born on that street,” Plunge Mayor Audrius Klišonis told BNS Lithuania.
In his words, a small spinoff of Darius and Girėnas Street was named after Rutkevič.
Rutkevič was born at her home in Plunge in 1943 and her family moved to Poland’s Wroclaw in 1944 as the Red Army was approaching.
Rutkevic is the first European woman to reach the summit of Mountain Everest on Oct. 16, 1978, and the third woman in the third woman in the world to do that. She died climbing Mount Kangchenjunga in 1992. Her body was never found.