As expected, summit news broke early today, and at top of the reports came the name Nirmal Purja. The record-breaking Nepali climber has summited Manaslu, his 13th 8000’er in six months, just four days after Cho Oyu. Shortly after, Stefi Troguet, climbing with Purja’s Elite Himalaya team, declared herself a “happy, blessed lady who’s been on the summit of Manaslu” in a Twitter post.
Purja, Troguet and the rest of the team are now safely back in Base Camp. The Andorran woman posted a cool summit pic, showing her as happy, colorful and well put-together as ever. She confirmed that the team has made all the way down back to Base Camp — 3,250m below — in “a perfect day.”
On Manaslu’s summit ridge early this morning. Photo: Adventure Consultants
The Adventure Consultants team also got off to an early start and reached the summit ridge by 6am, as the sun rose above a plain of clouds. “Extra care was taken on the final narrow section, and it was one-way traffic on the summit itself, which wasn’t big enough for our whole group at once,” they reported. Otherwise, there was no mention of crowds on that final stage, and their posted picture, above, just shows a few climbers edging downward. All are now back in Camp 2 for the night and will proceed down to Base Camp tomorrow.
In Base Camp, Kami Rita Sherpa (this year managing Base Camp for SST) confirmed to ExplorersWeb that “All is going swiftly this year, with summits every day, and no problems with crowds on the final ridge so far.”
