Nepali mountaineer climbs Everest for record 27th time

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Earlier on Wednesday, British mountain guide Kenton Cool reached the world’s highest point for the 17th time, extending his own record for the most summits by a non-Nepali.

Authorities have issued 478 permits to foreign climbers this year, the US$11,000 fee part of total costs for a summit ranging from US$45,000 to US$200,000.

Since most will need a guide, more than 900 people – a record – will try to summit this season, which runs until early June.

The 53-year-old Kami Rita Sherpa had held the overall title since 2018, when he ascended Everest for the 22nd time, passing the previous mark he shared with two other Sherpa climbers, both of whom have since retired.

But on Sunday another climber, Pasang Dawa Sherpa, 46, tied the record by reaching the top for the 26th time.

A guide for more than two decades, Kami Rita Sherpa first summited in 1994 when working for a commercial expedition.

Since then, he has climbed Everest almost every year, several times leading the first rope-fixing team to open the route to the top.

“These records were made not with an intention to make them but during my work as a guide,” Sherpa told Agence France-Presse last month as he headed to base camp.

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Dubbed “the Everest man”, Sherpa was born in 1970 in Thame, a village in the Himalayas renowned as a breeding ground for successful mountaineers.

Growing up, Sherpa watched his father and then his brother don climbing gear to join expeditions as mountain guides, and was soon following in their footsteps.

In 2019, he reached the summit twice in the span of six days.

Sherpa’s client Wednesday was reportedly Chinh Chu, a Vietnamese billionaire who made his fortune in finance, while Cool guided Richard Walker, executive chairman of British supermarket chain Iceland Foods, to the top.

Nepali guides, usually ethnic Sherpas from the valleys around Everest, are considered the backbone of the climbing industry and bear huge risks to carry equipment and food, fix ropes and repair ladders.

Cool, 49, first climbed Everest in 2004 and his 16th ascent last year gave him the sole record for the most summits by a non-Nepali climber, but he told AFP then that he was “surprised” by the attention.

“In reality, it’s not that amazing,” he said, pointing out that many Sherpa guides had stood on the peak more often than him.

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“People go ‘it’s a world record’, it’s not a world record,” he said. “It’s just that I happen to hold the non-Sherpa record, for whatever that is worth, which in my mind, (is) not very much.”

Three Nepali climbers died on the mountain last month when a block of glacial ice fell and swept them into a deep crevasse as they were crossing the treacherous Khumbu icefall as part of a supply mission.

Fatalities climbed to four when a 69-year-old US mountaineer died this month during his acclimatisation rotation at around 6,400 metres.