 |
Phunjo Jhangmu Lama is a Nepalese mountaineer and rescue professional. She first set the women's speed record for ascending Mount Everest in 2018 with a time of 39 hours and 6 minutes from Base Camp for the round trip. This record was broken in 2021 by Ada Tsang who completed it in 25 hours and 50 minutes. In May 2023, Lama reclaimed the record with a new fastest time, completing the ascent from Base Camp in 14 hours and 31 minutes and the entire round trip in 24 hours and 26 minutes [1]
Lama was born in Chhokangpaaro village in the Tsum Valley of Nepal's Gorkha District, a remote rural area that includes Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest mountain. She spent her early years herding yaks with her grandfather Me Norbu at altitudes between 4,500 and 5,000 meters. "I was born in the mountains and grew up in the mountains... but our community is not very involved in mountaineering," she noted. [2] She later relocated to Kathmandu where she studied English and Nepali, having grown up speaking the Sino-Tibetan language Tsum ke. [3]
LLama began her connection to mountaineering in 2014 when she started training for rescues and met other climbers. She began climbing professionally in 2016, going on to scale various peaks. Her guide Tendi Sherpa of Tag Nepal described her as "a very strong climber" who "loves the mountains." [2] Her notable ascents include climbing Cho Oyu without supplemental oxygen, as well as successful summits of Denali, Aconcagua, Manaslu, Ama Dablam, and Lobuche. [4] She was the first woman from the Tsum Valley and Manaslu region to summit Mount Everest. [3]
Lama serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for Nepal. She is also noted as Nepal's first female long-line helicopter rescuer, having received training in both the Swiss Alps and Nepalese Himalayas. [3]
Mount Everest, known locally as Sagarmatha or Qomolangma, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
Reinhold Andreas Messner is an Italian climber, explorer, and author from the German-speaking province of South Tyrol. He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds and also crossed the Gobi Desert alone. He is widely considered to be the greatest mountaineer of all time.
Cho Oyu is the sixth-highest mountain in the world at 8,188 metres (26,864 ft) above sea level. Cho Oyu means "Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan. The mountain is the westernmost major peak of the Khumbu sub-section of the Mahalangur Himalaya 20 km west of Mount Everest. The mountain stands on the China–Nepal border, between the Tibet Autonomous Region and Koshi Province.
The eight-thousanders are the 14 mountains recognized by the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) as being more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and sufficiently independent of neighbouring peaks. There is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and at times, the UIAA has considered whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountain peaks by including the major satellite peaks of eight-thousanders. All of the eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits lie in the altitude range known as the death zone.
Manaslu is the eighth-highest mountain in the world at 8,163 metres (26,781 ft) above sea level. It is in the Mansiri Himal, part of the Nepalese Himalayas, in west-central Nepal. Manaslu means "mountain of the spirit" and the word is derived from the Sanskrit word manasa, meaning "intellect" or "soul". Manaslu was first climbed on May 9, 1956, by Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu, members of a Japanese expedition. It is said that, given the many unsuccessful attempts by the British to climb Everest before Nepali Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary, "just as the British consider Everest their mountain, Manaslu has always been a Japanese mountain".
Anatoli Nikolaevich Boukreev was a Soviet and Kazakh mountaineer who made ascents of 10 of the 14 eight-thousander peaks—those above 8,000 m (26,247 ft)—without supplemental oxygen. From 1989 through 1997, he made 18 successful ascents of peaks above 8,000 m.
Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, a feat he completed on 30 May 2005.
Lakpa Gelu, often spelled Lhakpa, is a Nepalese Sherpa climber born in Jubing - 1, KhariKhola, Solukhumbu, Nepal. He is known for holding a world record for the fastest climbing of Mount Everest in only 10 hours 56 minutes and 46 seconds. Gelu's record-breaking trip was his tenth trip to the summit of the mountain.
Bachendri Pal is an Indian mountaineer. In 1984, she became the first Indian woman to climb the summit of the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest. She was awarded the third highest civilian award in India, Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2019.
Lincoln Rossl Hall OAM was a veteran Australian mountaineer, adventurer and author. Lincoln was part of the first Australian expedition to climb Mount Everest in 1984, which successfully forged a new route. He reached the summit of the mountain on his second attempt in 2006, miraculously surviving the night at 8,700 m (28,543 ft) on descent, after his family was told he had died.
Green Boots is the body of an unidentified climber that became a landmark on the main Northeast ridge route of Mount Everest. There exist several theories regarding the body's identity; the most popular one claims the body belongs to Tsewang Paljor, an Indian member of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition (ITBP) who died as part of the 1996 climbing disaster on the mountain wearing green Koflach mountaineering boots. All expeditions from the north side encountered the body curled in the limestone alcove cave at 8,500 m (27,900 ft) until it was moved in 2014—likely by the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which manages the north side of Everest.
Carlos Carsolio Larrea is a Mexican mountain climber. Carsolio is known for being the fourth man and the second youngest to climb the world's 14 eight-thousanders, all of them without supplemental oxygen.
Phurba Tashi Sherpa Mendewa is a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer known for his numerous ascents of major Himalayan peaks. These include 21 ascents of Mount Everest, six on Cho Oyu, eight on Manaslu, and one each on Shishapangma and Lhotse.
Garrett Madison is an American mountaineer, guide and expedition leader. Madison began guiding professionally in 1999 on Mount Rainier and has climbed Mount Everest 14 times. His company, Madison Mountaineering, specializes in climbs on Mount Everest and other high altitude peaks, operates on the highest peaks on all seven continents, and also provides training programs and summit climbs in Washington State.
The Mount Everest climbing season of 2017 began in spring with the first climbers reaching the top on May 11, from the north side. The first team on the south side reached the top on May 15. By early June, reports from Nepal indicated that 445 people had made it to the summit from the Nepali side. Reports indicate 160–200 summits on the north side, with 600–660 summiters overall for early 2017. This year had a roughly 50% success rate on that side for visiting climbers, which was down from other years. By 2018, the figure for the number of summiters of Everest was refined to 648. This includes 449 which summited via Nepal and 120 from Chinese Tibet.
Nirmal Purja is a Nepal-born naturalised British mountaineer. Prior to taking on a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas followed by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy. Purja is notable for having climbed all 14 eight-thousanders in a time of six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen between April and October 2019. This was a record at the time of climbing, although it was broken in 2023 by Kristin Harila and Tenjen Sherpa, who summitted all 14 eight-thousanders in 92 days. Purja was the first person to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, Purja, along with a team of nine other Nepalese climbers, completed the first winter ascent of K2.
Kristin Harila is a Norwegian-Northern Saami mountaineer and former cross-country skier. During 2022–2023, she set multiple speed records for the ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders, which are the peaks in the world that are over 8,000 metres in elevation.
Tenjen Sherpa, also known as Tenjen Lama Sherpa, was a Nepalese mountaineer who climbed all 14 eight-thousander together with Kristin Harila in 92 days. He went missing after an avalanche hit on Shishapangma on 7 October 2023. He was declared dead by Chinese authorities on 8 October 2023.
Tracee Lee Metcalfe is a high-altitude alpinist, backcountry skier and internal medicine physician from Vail, Colorado. Metcalfe received her M.D. from University of Colorado Denver's School of Medicine. She first started climbing eight-thousanders in 2015. Metcalfe is the first American woman to climb all 14 of the world's highest mountains over 8,000 meters.