When Arlene Blum tells you a woman’s place is on top, she knows what she’s talking about.

Blum led the first all-woman ascent of the Himalayan peak Annapurna I in 1978, which was the first American attempt on the 10th highest peak in the world, and she was the first American woman to try for the top of Mt. Everest. She also led the first all-woman ascent of Mt. Denali in Alaska in 1970.

For the Annapurna expedition Blum and her fellow climbers wore T-shirts emblazoned with the now famous feminist slogan of the climb: “A woman’s place is on top.”

The shirts helped raise the $80,000 needed for the expedition.

She wrote about the Annapurna expedition in her book “Annapurna: A Woman’s Place,” which was selected by National Geographic Adventure magazine as one of the 100 best travel books of all time. Fortune Magazine dubbed it one of 75 “smartest” books.

Blum will present a slideshow based on her new memoir, “Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life,” 3 p.m. Oct. 30 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.

Blum has a lot of trail breaking and blazing to write about: she has trekked 2,000 miles across Bhutan, Nepal and India in the first crossing of the Great Himalaya Range, and later hiked the length of the European Alps with her infant daughter Annalise on her back.

Blum has said of that trek, “Carrying Annalise and all her baby gear, nursing and diapering our way across the Alps was as much work as climbing Mount Everest, but it was lots more fun!”

When not bagging peaks or packing babies, Blum earned a doctorate in biophysical chemistry and has taught at Stanford University, Wellesley College and University of California, Berkeley.

Her research at Berkeley was instrumental in affecting a ban on tris, a chemical widely used as a flame retardant in children’s sleepwear that was found to be carcinogenic.

In addition to presenting leadershop workshops and cross-cultural seminars, Blum is climbing what may be her biggest “mountain” yet: working to implement a policy on chemicals that would require testing before a product is marketed.

On her Web site she notes: “We need a chemical policy that puts the public’s health and safety above the profits of the chemical industry. Currently, it is only after harm is shown that a chemical can be regulated or withdrawn from the market.”

It’s likely that Blum will touch on this subject at her Eagle Harbor appearance. wu