Fisher was raised in Bow, Washington, where she was introduced to the outdoors at an early age, visiting the Cascade Mountains often with her parents and sister. She struggled academically throughout elementary school, and was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in the sixth grade. By her junior year of high school, she had climbed Mount Adams, Mount Baker and Mount Rainier with her father and Mike Woodmansee, an experienced mountaineer, and had soon resolved to make an attempt at climbing the Seven Summits, the highest mountains in each of the seven continents.