The remaining commercial teams on Shisha Pangma reported 100% summit success today. It includes an unprecedented list of national and age records on the 14×8,000ers list, especially in the women’s category.
There are so many records that they are hard to track. Luckily, the outfitters have posted their summit lists. Seven Summit Treks also includes each individual record for their members, below.
Seven Summit Treks’ list of climbers who summited Shisha Pangma on October 9.
The Climbalaya team also had record holders, including two women. He Jing of China climbed all the 14×8,000’ers without supplementary oxygen. She becomes the first Chinese and the third woman to do them this way after Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner of Austria and Nives Meroi of Italy.
He Jing of China in a file image when she summited the Gasherbrums. Photo: Seven Summit Treks
More firsts
In the oxygen-assisted category, Dawa Yangzum Sherpa is the first Nepali woman to complete the feat. Dawa Yangzum is from Rolwaling, as is Mingma G, who last week became the first Nepalese to summit the 14×8,000’ers without supplementary oxygen. Dawa Yangzum climbed with Mingma Tenzing Sherpa, an IFMGA guide who also completed his 14 peaks list on Shisha Pangma.
Climbalaya’s Shisha Pangma expedition team in Base Camp some days ago. Photo: Climbalaya Treks & Expeditions
Their summit list also includes Bharath Thammineni of India, Da Chhere Sherpa, Ngima Nurbu Sherpa and, interestingly, Anna Pfaff of the U.S. Pfaff has returned to high altitude after losing six toes to frostbite on Mt. Huntington in Alaska. Last year, Pfaff made her first return to altitude on Kyajo Ri.
Strategy and oxygen
The Seven Summit Treks team — and likely everyone else — left from what Uta Ibrahimi calls Camp 2.5 on her InReach texts, located at some 7,000m. The strategy was to skip a third camp to speed up the push, which began Monday. The forecast does announce increasing winds and snowfall beginning tomorrow.
Nearly everyone who summited today made it back to Advanced Base Camp. Personal sherpas supported all the climbers. They followed the Inaki Ochoa de Olza variation to the summit, following the trail and the ropes fixed by the previous summiters, led by Imagine Nepal.
Adriana Brownlee’s Instagram story today.
Two of the climbers proceeded without supplementary oxygen. Adriana Brownlee confirmed that she climbed without bottled gas, as did Mario Vielmo. He is one of the few who has stopped for the night in Camp 2 and will reach Base Camp tomorrow.
It does seem odd that everyone has ignored the rules against no-O2 climbing established by the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association at the beginning of the season. We have no information about whether the regulations have changed, but Seven Summit Treks specifically noted in their summit report: “We also thank the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association for their support and coordination.”
‘A day when history was made’?
Meanwhile, Adriana Brownlee became the first UK woman to climb the 14×8,000’ers, Dorota Samocko became the first Polish woman, Alina Pekova the first Russian woman, and Naoko Watanabe the first Japanese woman. (Tracee Metcalfe became the first U.S. woman some days ago.)
Grace Tseng of Taiwan also completed her 8,000m and thus became the first Taiwanese person overall. Despite the controversy around some of her climbs, both The Himalayan Database and 8000ers.com have accepted her 2022 summit claim on Manaslu.
On that Manaslu climb, she claimed a bitterly disputed speed record, and her no-O2 climb of K2 was never seriously considered. There was also evidence that she did not reach the true summit of Kangchenjunga the first time, so Tseng climbed the mountain again.
While outfitters market this as “a day when history was made,” we need to put these feats in perspective compared to those of the past. The accomplishments of Alison Hargreaves, Wanda Rutkiewicz, Ekaterina Ivanova, and Junko Tabei belong in a different category.
Nima Rinji Sherpa. Photo: Seven Summit Treks
Age records
As for age records, Brownlee has become the youngest woman — both for the UK and Spain — while Nima Rinji Sherpa, the son of Seven Summit Treks and 14 Peaks Expeditions’ CEO Tashi Lakpa Sherpa has become the youngest overall to complete the 14×8,000’ers, at just 18 years old. Shehroze Kashif has become the youngest Pakistani climber (and the second Pakistani overall, a few days after Sirbaz Khan).
Eberhard Jurgalski of 8,000’ers.com, who is also a consultant for Guinness World Records, has told Explorersweb that, according to his summit studies, Mario Vielmo didn’t reach the true summits of Dhaulagiri and Manaslu, and Adriana Brownlee has not been to Manaslu’s highest point.
Brownlee was on Manaslu’s upper sections that day in the fall of 2021 that Mingma G opened the new variation route to the true summit, and photographer Jackson Groves obtained the drone images of Manaslu’s summit area that put an end to years of confusion around the highest point of the mountain. Brownlee was led by Gelje Sherpa and was at the time a member in Nirmal Purja’s Elite Exped team. Purja himself, his partners Mingma David (and a Russian client Mingma was guiding), and Mingma Tenzi (guiding Princess Asma Al Thani of Qatar) followed Mingma G and his team to the true summit. However, for some reason, the rest of the Elite Exped team did not. We will check for updates on the issue with Vielmo and Brownlee.
Not the same
While the summits are still summits, and so become duly registered in the statistics, the style, the support, and most of all, the spirit of adventure in which these summits were reached have completely changed such achievements.
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner at Camp 2 on the North Face of K2. She summited in 2011 without oxygen or support, she led some of the pitches, and had no fixed ropes or camps. Photo: Ralf Dujmovits/National Geographic
It was very different before the era of commercial expeditions. What once was an extraordinary challenge based on uncertainty and self-sufficiency, where summits were improbable and therefore a remarkable achievement, is now mostly a personal athletic goal. The amount of support greatly increases the safety and likelihood of success. Expedition leaders and guides manage risk and make all the critical decisions for their often unskilled clients.
Even the ones who climb without bottled oxygen typically have the support of sherpas who do all the chores for them, from melting water to fixing crampons to their boots. Often, a sherpa carries spare oxygen for them in case of trouble.
So many climbers
Finally, the credibility of the claims becomes progressively damaged. There are so many climbers each season that no chronicler has the resources to audit them all. The Himalayan Database recently announced that they will no longer interview all climbers coming from an 8,000m summit — only those teams climbing off-season on different routes. Instead, they plan to just copy the list of summit certificates provided by Nepalese authorities. The commercial operators themselves usually provide such lists and do not scrutinize their clients’ claims too carefully.
From a reporter’s point of view, climbing the highest peaks on Earth is still an incredible personal experience and a booming business. But ascents via normal routes for guided teams are losing their importance as news. The time is fast approaching when guided 8,000m climbs will be like guided climbs up the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc — of interest only when something goes wrong.
