Nepali climber Purnima Shrestha has successfully scaled Mount Lhotse, her second ascent of the peak above 8,000 meters in less than two weeks.
Shrestha, a native of Gorkha in central Nepal, stood atop Lhotse early morning on Monday, thus enlisting her name among only a few female climbers to scale six eight-thousanders.
Lhotse- a sister peak of Mount Everest, is the fourth tallest peak in the world.
Earlier this month, Shrestha had scaled Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world after Everest and K2 in Pakistan.
She is planning to scale Mount Makalu in this spring. if she climbs Makalau, she will be the first Nepali female climber to scale all seven 8,000m mountains from Nepal side. Though Nepal houses eight 8,000m peaks, Cho Oyu, situated between Nepal and Tibet, is climbed through Tibet route due to failure in fixing route from Nepal side.
So far, she has climbed Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu.
Born and raised in Gorkha, a remote part of Nepal, photojournalist Purnima came into mountaineering for the thrill of adventure. In 2017, Purnima had scaled Mount Manaslu. Next year, she made it to Everest summit without any formal climbing training or proper acclimatization.
Then, a year later in 2019, she scaled Ama Dablam. In 2021, she successfully climbed Mount Annapurna and Mount Dhaulagiri, becoming a member of the first Nepali female expedition team to reach the summit of these two mountains.
