Ex-Gurkha soldier Hari Budha Magar has become the first double above-knee amputee to climb Everest, a member of his team said on Sunday.
“He reached the peak of Sagarmatha around 3 p.m. (Nepal time) on Friday. After successfully reaching the summit, he descended to base camp and will return to Kathmandu tomorrow (Monday),” Him Bista told AFP, using the Nepalese name for Everest.
Mr Magar, 43, lost his legs after jumping on an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan in 2010 with the Gurkha Brigade, a unit of Nepalese soldiers in the British army.
Only two below-the-knee leg amputees have ever summited Everest: New Zealander Mark Inglis in 2006 and China’s Xia Boyu in 2018.
Equipped with prosthetic legs, Mr. Magar has already climbed several peaks, including Mount Toubkal in Morocco, Ben Nevis in Scotland and Mont Blanc in Europe.
But the former corporal was barred for several years from taking on the world’s tallest mountain due to a Nepalese law banning mountaineering for double amputees, as well as the blind.
Nepal’s Supreme Court struck down the law – which was not in effect when Mark Inglis climbed the 8,849-metre peak – in 2018 under pressure from, among others, Mr Magar.
“As long as you can adapt your life to the weather and the situation, anything is possible, there is no limit, the sky is the limit,” Magar told AFP last April before surrendering. at Everest base camp.
On his website, his rise is presented under the slogan “no legs, no limits”.
Nepal is home to eight of the ten highest peaks in the world and welcomes hundreds of climbers each spring, when temperatures are mild and the often dangerous Himalayan winds are generally light.
Bigyan Koirala, from Nepal’s tourism department, told AFP that nearly 450 climbers have already climbed Everest this season.
In 2023, Nepal has already issued 478 permits for the ascent of Everest and, as most mountaineers must be accompanied by a guide, more than 900 people were expected to attempt to reach the summit this season – a record.
Nine climbers have already lost their lives this climbing season.