Adriana Brownlee becomes youngest female climber to complete 14 peaks
French climber Alasdair Scot Mckenzie, 20, Pakistani Shehroze Kashif, 22, and British Adriana Brownlee, 23, are the youngest of the batch of 13 climbers who completed 14-peak challenge on Wednesday.
British climber Adriana Brownlee summited Shishapangma without supplemental oxygen making the accomplishment special as she completed the 14-peak challenge.
With ascent of the world’s 14th highest peak, twenty-three-year-old climber has become the world’s youngest female climber to achieve the feat.
She started the 14-peak mission at the age of 20. She wanted to achieve the feat in a record time. By 21, she had completed 10 of the 14 world’s highest peaks, a remarkable accomplishment.
Adriana climbed with Gelje Sherpa, who was in a race to become the youngest climber to summit all 14 peaks. Although the climber duo completed all 12 peaks in Nepal and Pakistan, they could not obtain climbing permit for Cho Oyu and Shishapangma, which lie entirely in China. After COVID pandemic, China closed its mountains until 2022.
In autumn 2023, four climbers were killed in two separate avalanches. Following the incident, China closed the mountains until autumn 2024.
By this time, Pakistani climber Shehroze Kashif, 22, French climber Alasdair Scot Mckenzie, 20, and Nepali climber Nima Rinji Sherpa,18, joined the race to set a record for the youngest climber.
All of them reached the summit of the world’s 14th highest mountain on Wednesday. Nima Rinji became the world’s youngest climber, Shehroze became the youngest Pakistani climber and Alasdair the youngest European climber.
Alasdair was the team leader of summer 2024 expedition team that made a historic summit of Cho Oyu from Nepal side in June this year. Gelje, who had made three attempts to summit the peak, had guided the team to the summit.
A total of 29 climbers of Seven Summit Treks reached Shishapangma summit. Of them, Naoko Watanabe became the first Japanese female to climb all 8,000ers, Dorota Lidia Samocko, first Polish female to complete 14 peaks, Alina Pekova, first Russian to climb all 8000ers, Grace Tseng, first Taiwanese, Adrian Laza, first Romanian, and Mario Vielmo (without supplemental oxygen) to complete all 14 peaks above 8,000m
Similarly, Nepali climbers Pasang Nurbu Sherpa and Mingtemba Sherpa from Seven Summit Treks and Tejen Gurung from Elite Exped completed 14 peak challenge on Wednesday.
