Nepali mountaineer Gelje Sherpa successfully led British climber Adriana Brownlee to the summit of Mount Broad Peak (8,051m) on Wednesday morning.
With this, Adriana becomes the youngest mountaineer to climb nine 8000ers. As for Gelje, he has now climbed 13 out of the 14 peaks above 8000m in the world.
“We reached the summit at 5.20 am local time,” Gelje told Everest Chronicle over phone from Broad Peak summit, overjoyed to tick off his 13th 8,000er.
This is the sixth 8,000er for both of them this season. Eighteen days ago, the duo summited Nanga Parbat (8,125m), also known as killer mountain, in Pakistan despite adverse weather conditions.
This spring, they had summited Annapurna (8,091m), Kanchenjunga (8,586m), Lhotse (8,516m) and Makalu (8,485m) in Nepal.
22 year old Adriana wants to become the youngest mountaineer in the world to summit all 14 peaks above 8,000.
20 year old Pakistani climber Shehroze Kashif is also pursuing the title of youngest 14 peak summiter. Kashif has summited eight 8,000ers till date. He had summited Nanga Parbat right after Adriana but went missing. Kashif and his guide Fazal Ali made it to Camp I after two days of being stranded, from where the duo were airlifted to Gilgit by a rescue team including Gelje.
Had Gejle, 29, summited Cho Oyu last October from Nepal side, he would have clinched the title of youngest climber to summit all 14 peaks above 8,000m. Currently, Mingma Gyabu Sherpa who finished all 14 peak summit at 30 years old, holds the title.
Now, Gelje has set another target: to become the youngest mountaineer to make double ascent of all 14 peaks above 8,000m. So far he has made double ascent of eight 8,000ers.
Now this record-setting duo will go on to attempt K2.
“We will attempt to summit K2 within the first weather window. So, we will be heading to K2 immediately,” Gelje said.
According to Seven Summit Treks, three Italian climbers – Marco Camandona, Pietro Picco and Raffaele Barbolini, one Austrian Thomas Krapfl, one Polish Dorota Lidia Samocko, one Brazilian Moses Fiamoncini and Nepali Dawa Nurbu Sherpa also summited Broad Peak on Wednesday morning.
