Nepalese climber Kami Rita Sherpa summited Everest for the 27th time on Wednesday, setting a new top-of-the-world record, the expedition organizer said.
“He successfully reached the summit this morning while guiding a Vietnamese climber,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Kami Rita Sherpa, 53, has held the record since she made the 22nd ascent to the top of Everest in 2018, surpassing a previous record she shared with two other sherpas, both now retired.
On Sunday, another Nepali climber, 46-year-old Pasang Dawa Sherpa, had climbed Everest for the 26th time, equaling the previous record.
A guide for more than 20 years, Kami Rita Sherpa reached the 8,848 meter summit for the first time in 1994.
The Nepali has climbed Everest almost every year since then, and on several occasions even led the first team of technicians tasked with paving the way to the summit.
“These records were not set with the intention of achieving them, but as part of my job as a guide,” Sherpa told AFP in April while on his way to base camp.
Nicknamed “the man from Everest,” Sherpa was born in 1970 in Thame, a village in the Himalayas known for being a breeding ground for talented climbers.
Nepali guides, usually Sherpas from the valleys around Everest, are considered the mainstays of the Himalayan mountaineering industry. They take enormous risks to transport equipment and food and to repair ropes and ladders.
Home to eight of the ten highest peaks in the world, Nepal welcomes hundreds of climbers each spring when temperatures are warmer and winds are generally calm.
This year, authorities issued 478 climbing permits to foreign climbers.
Source: TSF
