Anja Blacha has taken another step toward her goal of climbing all 14 eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen. According to the expedition operator Imagine Nepal, the 35-year-old German mountaineer reached the summit of the 8,516-meter-high Lhotse today.
Anja used the Nepalese operator’s base camp but climbed the world’s fourth-highest mountain without a Sherpa guide. Her summit success coincided exactly with the 70th anniversary of the first ascent by the Swiss climbers Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger. Yesterday, the Nepali rope-fixing team had secured the route to the highest point of Lhotse.
Now only Shishapangma remains
Last year, Anja Blacha became the first German woman to scale Mount Everest without an oxygen mask. At the time, she had wanted to add Lhotse to her list, but had to reluctantly give it up due to the approaching end of the season. Now only Shishapangma remains in her collection of eight-thousanders.
This spring, Anja will not be able to attempt the 8,027-meter-high mountain, the lowest of the 14 eight-thousanders. The Chinese-Tibetan authorities have not allowed any foreign climbers into the country this season. Shishapangma is the only eight-thousander located entirely in Tibet.
Anja Blacha is already by far the German woman with the most summit successes on eight-thousanders. Should she also scale Shishapangma without a breathing mask, she would also be the first German – regardless of gender – to do so without bottled oxygen.
Dujmovits still the only German to have summited all eight-thousanders
Ralf Dujmovits, to date the only German to have climbed the 14 highest mountains in the world, put on an breathing mask in 1992 near the summit of Mount Everest due to bad weather. He reached the summits of all the other eight-thousanders without using bottled oxygen. Ralf later failed eight times in his attempts to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen.
P.S.: Once again today, numerous successful ascents were reported from Everest – and also from Lhotse.
Update 19 May: Among the nearly 80 people who reached the summit of Mount Everest on Monday was Pasang Dawa Sherpa. For the 49-year-old Sherpa from the village of Pangboche in the Khumbu region, it was the 30th successful Everest summit of his career. Only Kami Rita Sherpa, who stood on the roof of the world for the 32nd time on Sunday, has been there more often than Pa Dawa, as Pasang Dawa is usually called.