A British climber and a Nepali guide have broken their own records for the number of ascents of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, Fox News reports.
Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal’s tourism department, said on Sunday that 50-year-old Briton Kenton Cool and 54-year-old Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa climbed the 29,032-foot summit for the 18th and 29th time respectively. They were on different expeditions accompanying their clients. Garrett Madison of the US-based expedition organising company Madison Mountaineering said of the Nepali climber:
He just keeps going and going… amazing guy!
Madison had teamed up with Kami Rita to climb the summits of Everest, Lhotse, and K2 in 2014.
K2, located in Pakistan, is the world’s second-highest mountain and Lhotse in Nepal is the fourth-tallest. Lukas Furtenbach of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures called Cool’s feat remarkable. Furtenbach, who is leading an expedition from the Chinese side of Everest, also said:
He is a fundamental part of the Everest guiding industry. Kenton Cool is an institution.
Both climbers used the South East Ridge route. This route was established by the first climbers New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. It remains the most popular route to the summit of Everest.
Kami Rita first climbed Everest in 1994 and has done so almost every year since, except for three years when authorities closed the mountain for various reasons. Last year, he climbed the mountain twice.
Mountaineering is a major form of tourism and a source of income as well as employment for Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks, including Mount Everest. Nepal has issued climbers 414 permits, each costing $11,000, for the climbing season, which ends this month.
More than 600 people made it to the peak last year. But it was also one of the deadliest climbing seasons – with 18 deaths recorded on the mountain.
