On Sunday, Kami Rita Sherpa, a climber from Nepal, achieved his 29th summit of the world’s highest mountain, surpassing his previous record.
“Kami Rita reached the summit this morning. Now he has made a new record with 29 summits of Everest,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, his expedition organiser, told AFP.
Working on an expedition, Sherpa—also referred to as “Everest Man”—climbed the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak for the first time in 1994. She has been a guide for almost 20 years.
Since then, he has guided clients on nearly yearly ascents of Everest. It was unclear at first if he was accompanied by a client on Sunday.
“Back again for the 29th summit to the top of the world… One man’s job,another man/woman’s dream,” Sherpa posted on his Instagram from base camp last week.
Sherpa equaled another guide, Pasang Dawa Sherpa, in the number of ascents made on Mount Everest last year when he made two ascents.
The 54-year-old Sherpa has previously declared that he has been “just working” and that breaking records is not his goal.
In addition, he has scaled several other difficult 8,000-meter peaks, such as Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain in the world.
414 Everest permits have been distributed by Nepal to climbers for the upcoming spring climbing season, which begins in April and ends in early June.
Most Everest hopefuls are escorted by a Nepali guide, meaning more than 800 climbers will tread the path to the top of the world’s highest peak in the coming weeks after a group of Nepali climbers opened the route to the summit on Friday.
This year, China also reopened the Tibetan route to foreigners for the first time since closing it in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks and welcomes hundreds of adventurers each spring, when temperatures are warm and winds are typically calm.
A climbing boom has made mountaineering a lucrative business since Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent in 1953.
Last year, more than 600 climbers made it to the summit of Everest but it was also the deadliest season on the mountain, with 18 fatalities.
