She has done it again. Today, Anja Blacha – along with the rope-fixing team of the Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) led by Lakpa “Makalu” Sherpa – reached the 8,167-meter-high summit of Dhaulagiri in western Nepal.
According to SST, the 34-year-old German mountaineer was one of a total of 13 people to achieve the first summit success this spring on the seventh highest mountain on earth. Anja once again did without bottled oxygen during the ascent – as did Pakistani Sajid Ali Sadpara and Taiwanese Lu Chung-Han.
Ngima Tashi Sherpa (l.) and Rima Rinje Sherpa (r.)
It doesn’t help to turn a blind eye. Ngima Tashi Sherpa and Rima Rinje Sherpa almost certainly did not survive the avalanche accident on Monday on the eight-thousander Annapurna I in western Nepal. Four days later, the chances of finding them alive are close to zero.
On Makalu, the fifth highest mountain on earth, the ropes are now fixed up to the highest point at 8,485 meters. According to Nepal’s largest expedition operator Seven Summit Treks, the eight-man rope-fixing team reached the summit today together with a Nepalese client.
The team was led by the experienced Lakpa Sherpa, who is not called Makalu Lakpa for nothing. It was his eighth time on this summit. In 2022, he made headlines when he scaled Makalu three times in 16 days. The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism has issued 40 climbing permits for Makalu this spring so far (as of 9 April).
In the midst of the summit success reports from the eight-thousander Annapurna I, news of an avalanche accident broke. Above Camp 2 (5,600 meters), a “huge avalanche” broke loose, as Chhang Dawa Sherpa, expedition leader of the operator Seven Summit Treks, reported on Instagram. “We suffered a terrible disaster. While ferrying oxygen cylinders for the summit push, two of our Climbing Sherpas, Ngima Tashi and Rima Rinje, were swept away.”
The first summit successes of the fall season on the eight-thousanders of Nepal and Tibet are reported from Manaslu. According to Nepal’s largest expedition operator Seven Summit Treks, Namgel Dorjee Tamang, Ngima Tashi Sherpa, Pemba Tashi Sherpa, Dawa Sherpa, Pam Dorjee Sherpa and Sirjangbu Sherpa reached the summit of the eighth highest mountain on earth at 8,163 meters this afternoon local time. They fixed the ropes up to the highest point on the eight-thousander in western Nepal. The numerous members of the commercial teams will be using the ropes to ascend in the coming weeks.
Now no other woman from Germany has stood on eight-thousanders more often than Anja Blacha. The mountaineer, who celebrates her 34th birthday on 18 June, achieved a last-minute summit success on the 8,586-meter-high Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, at the end of the spring season on the eight-thousanders in Nepal. She had already scaled the 8,485-meter-high Makalu, the fifth-highest of all mountains, on 12 May. On both mountains, Anja climbed on the normal routes, with teams from the commercial expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) and did without bottled oxygen herself.
These were her seventh and eighth eight-thousanders after Mount Everest (in 2017 and 2021), Broad Peak, K2 (both in 2019), Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and II (these three in 2023). Only on Everest did she use a breathing mask on her ascents. This means that the German mountaineer now has one more eight-thousander summit success to her name than Alix von Melle, who has summited seven eight-thousanders to date. Anja Blacha answered my questions after her return from Kangchenjunga.
Congratulations, Anja. You scaled Makalu and now Kangchenjunga at the end of the spring season without bottled oxygen. With eight eight-thousanders to your name, you can now call yourself the most successful German female high-altitude mountaineer. How does that feel?
It was Gelje’s fourth attempt to reach the summit this way. In addition to him, Tenging Gyaljen Sherpa, Lakpa Temba Sherpa, Chhangba Sherpa, Lakpa Tenji Sherpa and Ngima Ongda Sherpa as well as their 19-year-old French client Alasdair Mckenzie stood on the highest point. For Mckenzie, it was the thirteenth of the 14 eight-thousanders. All the climbers used bottled oxygen. It was the first Cho Oyu summit success from the south since 2009, when Denis Urubko and Boris Dedeshko climbed a new route through the Southeast Face without breathing masks.
Farewell to Lhakpa Tenji Sherpa. Today, Monday, family and friends – including his wife, his daughter, his two sons and his brothers – paid their last respects to him at a funeral in Kathmandu. Lhakpa Tenji had led a Jordanian client to the 8,485-metre-high summit of Makalu on Monday last week (6 May) and died on the descent to Camp 3 at around 7,500 meters – probably from high altitude sickness. Opinions differ as to whether the experienced mountaineer’s death could have been prevented.
The first summit wave of the spring season can now also roll in on the Nepalese south side of Mount Everest. The Nepalese operator Seven Summit Treks reported that the ten-man rope-fixing team led by Dendi Sherpa reached the summit at 8,849 meters this evening. The route to the highest point has been secured with ropes and is now open, it said.
The commercial climbing season on Nepal’s eight-thousanders has begun. The first summit successes of the spring were reported from two mountains higher than 8,000 meters – in both cases it was initially the teams of local climbers who fixed the ropes to the highest points.
According to Mingma Sherpa, head of Nepal’s largest expedition provider Seven Summit Treks (SST), an eight-man team led by Lakpa Sherpa reached the summit of Makalu at 8,485 meters yesterday, Thursday. The eight-thousander not far from Mount Everest is the fifth highest mountain on earth.
