Pasang Dawa Sherpa summits Everest for 30th time
Veteran Nepali guide closes in on Kami Rita Sherpa’s record after another ascent during the spring climbing season
PC: Abiral Rai
Pasang Dawa Sherpa reached the summit of Everest on Monday for the 30th time, placing him just behind Kami Rita Sherpa in the climbing records.
According to Gobinda Gurung, Managing Director of TAG Nepal Treks and Expedition, Pasang Dawa was guiding a client when he stood atop the world’s highest mountain early in the morning.
“He is not chasing records,” Gurung told Everest Chronicle. “He was leading a client to the summit.” Yet he added that Pasang Dawa may attempt another ascent before the climbing season ends.
Should he succeed, he would stand only one summit shy of Kami Rita Sherpa, who scaled Everest for the 32nd time a day earlier.
Such records are often by-products of labour rather than personal ambition. Nepal’s Sherpa climbers routinely ascend the world’s tallest peaks in the course of their work as high-altitude guides, rope-fixing specialists and expedition leaders.
For many, mountaineering is both profession and inheritance. Raised in villages along the Himalayan foothills, they possess a lifetime’s familiarity with altitude and terrain that few outsiders can match.
Known widely as “PaDawa”, Pasang Dawa has climbed Everest in several capacities: as part of rope-fixing teams opening the route each season and as a lead guide for foreign expeditions. Born in Pangboche, a village near Everest, he first summited the mountain in 1998.
At seven years younger than Kami Rita, Pasang Dawa may yet have many more ascents ahead of him.
