The first summit successes of the fall season on the eight-thousanders in Tibet are now perfect. The expedition operator Imagine Nepal announced that an eleven-member team led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa reached the summit of Shishapangma at 8,027 meters today. Five team members had completed their eight-thousand-meter collection, it said: the Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa and Dawa Gyalje Sherpa, the US-American Tracee Lee Metcalfe, the Japanese Naoki Ishikawa and the Pakistani Sirbaz Khan.
Sirbaz Kahn first Pakistani to climb all 14 eight-thousanders
Sirbaz Khan is the first Pakistani to stand on the summits of all 14 eight-thousanders. He climbed twelve of them without bottled oxygen. Sirbaz was born in the Hunza Valley in 1987 and grew up in the most humble of circumstances. His father was a carpenter. In 2004, Sirbaz’s first job as a porter took him to base camp at K2, the second highest mountain on earth.
For more than a decade, he worked as a kitchen assistant and porter for expeditions – before he started climbing the highest peaks himself. In 2017, he scaled Nanga Parbat, his first eight-thousander, together with Mingma Gyalje. Sirbaz has summited Mount Everest twice: with bottled oxygen in 2021 and without in 2023. Only Annapurna I and Kangchenjunga are missing from the list of his eight-thousander successes without a breathing mask.
Mingma Gyalje Sherpa first Nepalese to climb all 8000ers without bottled oxygen
Mingma Gyalje Sherpa has long been one of Nepal’s most successful mountain entrepreneurs and mountaineers. His commercial expedition company Imagine Nepal has been flourishing for years. The 38-year-old has excellent contacts in China, where most of his clients now come from.
As a mountaineer, Mingma achieved a sensation in 2015. In his home region, the Rolwaling Valley, he mastered the West Face of the 6,685-metre-high Chobutse (sometimes also called Tsoboje) for the first time – climbing solo. At that time, he had already scaled six eight-thousanders.
In 2021, Mingma Gyalje was also one of the ten Nepalese climbers who succeeded in the prestigious first winter ascent of K2. According to his company Imagine Nepal, the 38-year-old did without bottled oxygen on Shishapangma. He is the first Nepalese to have climbed all 14 eight-thousanders without a breathing mask, it said.
Violation of the regulations of the Chinese-Tibetan authorities?
The fact that both Mingma and Sirbaz climbed Shishapangma without bottled oxygen actually contradicts the regulations of the Chinese-Tibetan authorities. Their rules for eight-thousander ascents state that all climbers must use breathing masks above an altitude of 7,000 meters.
Tracee Lee Metcalfe should have no problem with this rule. The 50-year-old doctor from Colorado, a specialist in high-altitude medicine, regularly uses a breathing mask on her eight-thousander ascents. Metcalfe is the first woman from the USA to have climbed all 14 eight-thousanders. Last year, Anna Gutu and Gina Marie Rzucidlo were in a real race for this “title” – and paid for it with their lives. Both died in avalanches, as did their Nepalese companions Mingmar Sherpa and Tenjen “Lama” Sherpa.
Rope-fixing team reaches the summit of Cho Oyu
The first summit successes of the season are also reported from the Tibetan north side of Cho Oyu. According to the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures, the rope-fixing team reached the summit at 8,188 meters.
Update 10 pm: According to the “Himalayan Times” newspaper, nine minutes after Mingma Gyalje Sherpa’s team, Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja also reached the summit of Shishapangma. He completed his collection of the 14 eight-thousander without bottled oxygen too – within two and a half years.