(Kathmandu) Nepalese mountaineer Kami Rita Sherpa reached the summit of Everest for the 30e times on Wednesday, breaking his own record for climbing the highest mountain in the world, announced the organizer of his expedition.
“Kami Rita reached the summit this morning (Wednesday). He set a new record of 30 Everest ascents,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks told AFP.
A mountain guide for more than 20 years, Kami Rita Sherpa climbed for the first time on the “Roof of the World”, culminating at 8,849 meters above sea level, in 1994. It was for a commercial expedition.
Since then, he has reached the summit of Everest almost every year, guiding clients.
“I am happy with this record, but records end up being broken,” Kami Rita Sherpa told AFP on May 12, after reaching the summit of Everest for the 29th time.e times.
In 2023, he climbed to the summit of Everest twice, each time breaking a new record after being caught by another guide, Pasang Dawa Sherpa.
“Some people are chasing records, but I don’t do this for records,” Kami Rita Sherpa told AFP last year. Climbing to the top is his livelihood.
Nicknamed “Mister Everest”, he was born in 1970 in Thame, a village in the Himalayas, a breeding ground for experienced mountaineers.
He grew up in the Himalayan valley watching his father, then his brother, go on expeditions as mountain guides, before following in their footsteps.
In 2019, he summited Everest twice in the space of six days.
The Nepalese has other peaks over 8,000 meters to his name, including K2 in Pakistan, the second highest mountain in the world.
Fifth death of the season
He accomplished his feat on Wednesday when the Makalu Adventure agency announced the death of a Romanian mountaineer, Gabriel Viorel Tabara, on Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world.
“He was found dead in his tent at Camp 3 on Monday morning by his guide,” said Mohan Lamsal of Makalu Adventure.
“We are trying to bring down the body of the climber,” he said.
This death is the fifth this season.
Everest and Lhotse share the same route until it splits at 7,200 meters above sea level.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Nepal Tourism Department further announced that British climber Daniel Paul Paterson, 40, and his guide Pas Tenji Sherpa, 21, have been missing on Everest since Tuesday morning.
“The mountaineer and his guide slipped and disappeared near the South Summit”, at around 8,750 meters above sea level on the way down, according to Narayan Prasad Khanal, an official from the Tourism Department, quoted in the press release.
Six experienced mountain guides are looking for them, Khanal said.
Last week, two Mongolian climbers who went missing after reaching the summit of Everest were found dead.
Previously, a Frenchman and a Nepalese had died on Makalu, the fifth highest peak in the world.
Around 500 foreign and Nepalese climbers have already reached the summit of Everest since April, when the climbing season begins which lasts until early June.
In spring, when temperatures are mild and winds generally lower, hundreds of climbers flock to Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks.
Experienced ultra sherpas are the first, each year, to reach the summit of Everest, opening a safe circuit.
Nepal’s multimillion-dollar mountaineering industry relies on the experience of Sherpas, Nepalese mountaineers who serve as guides. They pay a heavy price to accompany foreign climbers every year. A third of the deaths on Everest are Nepalese guides.
This year, Nepal has issued more than 900 permits to climb its mountains –– including 419 for Everest – to foreign mountaineers who, for the most part, climb accompanied by a Nepalese guide.
In 2023, more than 600 climbers reached the summit of Everest, a year which was marked by the disastrous record of 18 deaths.