This 55-Year-Old Sherpa Guide Just Summited Mount Everest for the 31st Time, Breaking His Own Record
Kami Rita has been scaling the world’s tallest mountain since 1994. He reaches the summit nearly every year—and sometimes twice in the same year
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In the early hours of May 27, a Nepali Sherpa guide summited Mount Everest for the 31st time.
Kami Rita, who goes by his first name, reached the top of the 29,032-foot-tall peak at around 4 a.m., breaking the record he set last year. The 55-year-old guide, who works for Seven Summit Treks, made the journey while leading a group of 22 mountaineers from the Indian army, along with 27 other Sherpas, per Reuters’ Gopal Sharma.
He had attempted to summit several days earlier, but he had to turn back because of bad weather, reports Binaj Gurubacharya of the Associated Press. Unpredictable weather patterns have been a major hurdle for mountaineers attempting to summit Everest this month, according to the Kathmandu Post’s Sangam Prasain.
“I’m proud of this achievement,” Kami Rita tells the New York Times’ Bhadra Sharma and Jonathan Wolfe. “This climb was a bit difficult because of harsh weather conditions. In my experience, over the last two or three years, climbing the mountain has become more difficult.”
Kami Rita first summited Everest in 1994, when he was 24 years old. He’s climbed the towering mountain nearly every year since then—at least once, sometimes twice, per NPR’s Bill Chappell. Over the past three decades, he has only missed a handful of years because Everest was closed for various reasons, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kami Rita has also conquered several other towering peaks, including K2, Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Lhotse.
“He is not just a national climbing hero, but a global symbol of Everest itself,” writes Seven Summit Treks in a social media post.
As a mountain guide, Kami Rita is following in the footsteps of his father, who was one of the first Sherpa guides, according to the AP. But he tells the Times that he doesn’t see much of a future for the industry. Climate change is causing snow to melt more quickly than in the past, which has made mountaineering more dangerous, he says.
“I’m not asking my son to work as a mountain guide,” he tells the Times. “Sons or grandsons of other Sherpa families are also not joining the profession. … We have faced greater risks over time, and we don’t want to bring our children into this career.”
Kami Rita’s closest competitor is Pasang Dawa, a fellow Sherpa guide who has summited Everest 29 times. The record for non-Sherpa mountaineers is held by Kenton Cool, a British guide who has reached the top 19 times. He is followed by American climbers Dave Hahn and Garrett Madison, who have each scaled the peak 15 times.
New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian mountaineer Tenzing Norgay made the first recorded summit of Everest—the world’s tallest mountain—on May 29, 1953. Since then, more than 7,000 climbers have reached the top for more than 12,800 total recorded summits, according to Alan Arnette, a mountaineer and climbing coach who runs a blog about Everest. This week, on the 72nd anniversary of Hillary and Norgay’s summit, Nepal’s mountaineering community gathered in Kathmandu to celebrate International Everest Day.
This year’s spring Everest climbing season is starting to wind down. Nepal issued 468 climbing permits for the mountain, with more than 300 climbers and Sherpa successfully reaching the summit in March, April and May, reports Reuters. At least four people have died while attempting to summit Everest this spring, per Outside magazine’s Ben Ayers.
Earlier this month, a group of four British men made headlines when they summited Everest in just five days—a fraction of the normal time—with help from xenon gas. Use of the gas is controversial in the mountaineering world, with some critics arguing that it’s a shortcut.
Asked for his thoughts on xenon gas, Kami Rita tells the Times that it’s “quite new for all of us.”
“It will take at least a few years to research this gas,” he adds. “Only then can we understand its impact on climbing.”
