Today the list of people who have stood on all 14 eight-thousanders has virtually exploded – it has grown by 15 names. The reason was a successful summit day of commercial expeditions on the 8,027-meter-high Shishapagma in Tibet. According to the largest Nepalese operator Seven Summit Treks, 29 team members reached the summit of the lowest eight-thousander. Twelve of them completed their collection of eight-thousanders: Nepalese Nima Rinji Sherpa, Mingtemba Sherpa and Lakpa Temba Sherpa, Pakistani Sheroze Kashif, Japanese Naoko Watanabe, Polish Dorota Rasinska-Samocko, British Adriana Brownlee, Russian Alina Pekova, Taiwanese Ko-Erh (called “Grace”) Tseng, French Alasdair McKenzie, Romanian Adrian Laza and Italian Mario Vielmo.
The expedition operator Climbalaya also reported three team members who had now stood on all 14 eight-thousanders after their summit success on Shishapangma: Dawa Yangzum Sherpa and Mingma Tenzing Sherpa from Nepal as well as the Chinese woman He Jing.
Chinese-Tibetan authorities apparently not too strict
He Jing has climbed all eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen, according to Climbalaya. Whether this also applies to Mario Vielmo is unclear. The Italian had climbed the other 13 eight-thousanders without a breathing mask, but told the ExplorersWeb portal that he would adhere to all regulations, regardless of what they looked like.
The Chinese-Tibetan authorities had actually obliged all aspirants on eight-thousanders to use bottled oxygen above 7,000 meters. In the end, however, they probably didn’t take it so seriously after all. The German Anja Blacha on Cho Oyu as well as the Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa and the Nepalese-born Brit Nirmal Purja on Shishapangma climbed without bottled oxygen.
Younger and younger and in less and less time
Among the newcomers on the list of 14 eight-thousander summiteers, it is striking that some of them are still very young. The Nepalese Nima Rinji Sherpa is only 18 years old, the Frenchman Alasdair McKenzie is 20, the Pakistani Sheroze Kashif is 22 and Adriana Brownlee is 23.
Furthermore, the time span in which the 14 eight-thousanders are collected is getting shorter and shorter. Alina Pekova, the first woman from Russia on the list, only needed around one and a half years to do so. In 2023 alone, she stood on the summits of eleven eight-thousanders. It took Nima Rinji a good two years and Dorota Rasinska-Samocko, the first woman from Poland to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, just under three and a half years.
Comparison with pioneers is out of the question
These successes were and are only possible because the commercial operators have now perfected their system. More infrastructure on the normal routes of the eight-thousanders, more Sherpa support, more bottled oxygen. This is the only way that expedition operators can guarantee their clients high success rates.
A comparison with pioneers of eight-thousander mountaineering such as Reinhold Messner, Jerzy Kukuczka or Erhard Loretan in the 1970s and 1980s is out of the question. At the time, they were literally breaking new ground, climbing new routes, without bottled oxygen or in winter. And they often failed – which is almost a no-go for commercial expeditions.
Fighter for women’s rights in Nepal
I would like to highlight the success of Dawa Yangzum Sherpa. The 34-year-old is not only the first woman from Nepal to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, but also a pioneer of women’s mountaineering in her home country. In 2012, she scaled Everest from the Tibetan north side. In 2014, she reached the summit of K2 with her compatriots Maya Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita. They were the first women from Nepal to climb the second highest mountain on earth.
In 2017, Dawa Yangzum was the first woman in Asia to receive an international mountain guide certificate and she works regularly as a mountain guide on Everest. She has been offering climbing courses for young Nepalese women in the Khumbu region since 2020. She herself has lived in Boulder in the USA for years and works for the expedition operator Alpine Ascents International.
“I feel well respected and equal, maybe also because I am a Sherpa women and work in another country,” Dawa Yangzum wrote to me a few years ago. “In Nepal, as a woman you are not treated so well and equally everytime. Sometimes I found it little hard between so many males.”By climbing all 14 eight-thousanders, she has set another important example for the women of Nepal.
Update 10 October: According to the expedition operator Elite Exped, Nepalese climber Tejan Gurung also completed his eight-thousander collection on 9 October with his summit success on Shishapangma. – According to media reports, the Italian Mario Vielmo as well as the British Adriana Brownlee did without bottled oxygen on Shishapangma.
