Nepali woman’s 10th Everest climb breaks her own record

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – A 48-year-old Nepali woman scaled Mount Everest for the 10th time on Thursday, breaking her own record for the most summits of the world’s highest mountain by a female climber, her hiking company said.

Lhakpa Sherpa last climbed the 8,848.86-metre (29,031.69-foot) mountain in 2018. A fellow Nepali, Kami Rita Sherpa, holds the men’s record of 26 climbs.

“Lhakpa has broken her own record and become the first woman to achieve 10 summits,” her brother Mingma Gelu Sherpa, an official of her Seven Summit Club hiking agency, told Reuters.

A Nepali tourism official, Bhishma Kumar Bhattarai, confirmed that she had reached the summit.

One of 11 children, Lhakpa was born in the eastern district of Sankhuwasabha, home to the world’s fifth highest mountain, Makalu.

Also on Thursday, seven members of an “All Black Expedition” comprising climbers from the United States and Kenya climbed Mount Everest, said Jeevan Ghimire of the Shangrila-Nepal Trek hiking company.

Fewer than 10 black mountaineers in total had reached the peak before, but this is the first time that all members of an expedition were Black, hiking officials said.

Everest has been climbed 10,657 times since it was first scaled in 1953 from the Nepali and Tibetan sides. Many have climbed it more than once, and 311 people have died.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)