This Sherpa set a world record with 27 summits of Mount Everest. Then, he topped himself with a 28th.
A sherpa who set a world record for most summits of Mount Everest last week just beat his own record. Kami Rita Sherpa, aka Topke, just completed his 28th ascent of the mountain, which sits on the China-Nepal border.
Sherpas live in the region and are expert mountaineers, often guiding people on their treks of Mount Everest. Most Sherpas make the journey a handful of times.
But on May 17, he made his 27th summit, setting a world record, according to Guinness. And on Tuesday, at 9:23 a.m., he made his 28th, says Seven Summit Treks, a company that coordinates climbs.
The 53-year-old first climbed the 29,000-foot mountain in 1994 and has scaled it nearly every year since. After first beating the record with his 27th trek, Kami Rita said he couldn't "help but overflow with joy and pride."
"This journey taught me invaluable lessons about resilience, determination, and the power of human spirit," he wrote on Instagram. "It reminded me that anything is possible when you surround yourself with the right people and believe in yourself wholeheartedly."
Since 1953, when New Zealand's Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the top of Everest, thousands of others have attempted the trek.
Climbing Everest, however, is taxing, and many people can experience acute mountain sickness due to the high altitude, frostbite and exhaustion, which can all lead to death. Bad weather conditions can also cut treks short.
Many climbers use oxygen to help them through the extremely high-altitude trek.
Earlier this month, an American climber died at about 21,000 feet on the mountain after feeling sick. Bad weather prevented Sherpas from quickly recovering the 69-year-old's body. Three Sherpa climbers died in April after falling into a crevasse.
An average of five people die climbing Mount Everest each year, but 11 died in 2019. The deaths were blamed on overcrowding that year.
In 2021, two climbers set two different records on the mountain. Seventy-five-year-old Arthur Muir became the oldest American to reach the peak and Tsang Yin-Hung, a teacher from Hong Kong, set the record for fastest ascent by a woman – completing it in just under 26 hours. It can take weeks or even months to complete the whole trek