In the Alps she gained renown for surviving 53 hours on a rope on the unclimbed North-East face of the Finsteraarhorn, when her expedition was caught in a blizzard in the summer of 1902.
Fluent in Arabic and Persian, she spent almost 10 years before World War I, traversing the desert, making maps and gaining the trust of tribal leaders and kings and in 1921 Baghdad, she drew the boundaries of the country that became Iraq.