On Wednesday, Kami Rita Sherpa of Nepal broke the previous record for most summits of Mount Everest by climbing to the peak for the 27th time.
The leader of his expedition, Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, reported that “he successfully reached the summit this morning while leading a Vietnamese climber.”
Eight of the world’s ten tallest peaks, including the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) Everest, are found in Nepal. Each spring, when the weather is pleasant and the winds are usually calm, hundreds of adventurers visit Nepal.
Earlier on Wednesday, British mountaineer Kenton Cool broke his own record for the most summits by a non-Nepalese by ascending to the highest point on Earth for the 17th time.
Authorities have awarded 478 licences to foreign climbers this year, with the $11,000 charge representing a portion of the $45,000 to $200,000 in overall costs for a summit. More than 900 people, a record, will attempt to summit this season, which lasts until early June, even though the majority will require a guide.
The 53-year-old Kami Rita Sherpa had been holding the overall championship ever since he made his 22nd ascent of Everest in 2018, breaking the previous record he had previously shared with two other Sherpa climbers who have since retired.
But on Sunday, another climber, 46-year-old Pasang Dawa Sherpa, tied the mark by making it to the summit a record-tying 26 times.
Kami Rita Sherpa, a guide for more than 20 years, reached her first summit while working for a commercial expedition in 1994.
Since then, he has nearly always climbed Everest, multiple times serving as team leader for the initial rope-fixing teams that first opened the route to the summit. Last month, as he was making his way to base camp, Sherpa stated, “These records were made during my employment as a guide, not with a goal to make them.
Sherpa, known as “the Everest man,” was born in 1970 in Thame, a Himalayan region well known for producing excellent mountaineers. Sherpa learned about mountain guiding by seeing his father and brother as a young boy, and he soon followed in their footsteps.
He made two summit attempts in 2019 over the course of six days.
Chinh Chu, a Vietnamese millionaire who got his money in finance, was apparently Sherpa’s customer on Wednesday, and Richard Walker, executive chairman of the British grocery business Iceland Foods, was helped to the top by Cool.
The backbone of the climbing industry, Nepali guides—typically Sherpas from the regions surrounding Mount Everest—take great risks to carry supplies and meals, fix ropes, and maintain ladders.
Cool, 49, first summited Everest in 2004. Last year, he made his 16th ascent, giving him the record for the most summits by a climber who is not Nepali. At the time, he said he was “surprised” by the attention.
He said, “In reality, it’s not that amazing,” noting that many Sherpa guides had climbed the peak more frequently than he had.
People claim that something is a world record, but it isn’t, he said. It’s only that, for whatever it’s worth, which, in my opinion, isn’t much, I happen to hold the non-Sherpa record.
A block of glacial ice fell and washed three Nepali climbers into a deep chasm on the mountain last month, killing them as they attempted to negotiate the perilous Khumbu icefall as part of a supply expedition.
When a 69-year-old US mountaineer passed away this month while performing an acclimatisation rotation at about 6,400 metres, the death toll rose to four.
