The porters were skeptical of the entire venture. The locals rarely climbed mountains and were not used to taking orders from a woman, which made Fanny's position difficult. The Workmans tried to solve these problems with condescension and high-handedness. Kenneth Mason maintains in his history of Himalayan mountaineering, written in 1955, that "The Workmans were, on their journeys, the victims of their own faults. They were too impatient and rarely tried to understand the mentality of the porters and so did not get the best out of them." Labor problems beset all of their expeditions because, as Miller puts it, "Almost alone of Victorian travellers, the Workmans had absolutely no sympathy or even common-sense understanding of the local people, into whose poor and remote villages they burst with trains of followers demanding service and supplies." In her chapter on Workman, Miller argues that the couple, being American, did not have the same sense of caste or class that British explorers had: "the Workmans, like most of their countrymen, plunged in their enterprises headlong, expecting their enormous energy to overcome all obstacles. They were justifiably criticized by the British for their callous, incompetent behavior toward the Indians." After travelling to the Himalaya the first time, the Workmans became entranced with climbing and mountaineering. Over a span of 14 years, they traveled eight times to the area, which at the time was almost completely unexplored and unmapped. Their trips were made without the benefit of modern lightweight equipment, freeze-dried foods, sunblock, or radios. On each expedition, they explored, surveyed, and photographed, ultimately reporting on their findings and creating maps. The couple shared and alternated responsibilities; one year Fanny would organize the logistics of their journey and William would work on the scientific projects and the next year they would reverse roles. After their first trip to the Himalaya and subsequent labor problems, the Workmans hired Matthias Zurbriggen, the best and most experienced mountain climbing guide of the time. Thus, in 1899, with 50 local porters and Zurbriggen, the Workmans began to explore the Biafo Glacier in the Karakoram, but dangerous crevasses and poor weather forced them instead to shift to the Skoro La Glacier and the unclimbed peaks around it. They reached Siegfriedhorn, an 18,600-foot (5,700 m) summit that she named after her son, giving Fanny an altitude record for women at the time.