Norwegian woman climber Kristin Harila is aiming to summit Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, K2, and the Broad Peak in Pakistan as she looks to become the fastest mountaineer to climb the world’s 14 tallest peaks in three months.
She climbed Mount Manaslu in Nepal on Saturday, her ninth highest mountain in 45 days, a hiking official said.
The 37-year-old scaled Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest at 8,163 metres, in west Nepal with Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa and five other guides before dawn.
She has also climbed Shishapangma, Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu and Annapurna.
"She is now descending from the summit and will leave for Pakistan with Tenjen, who has been with her on all nine climbs," Tashi Lakpa Sherpa of the Seven Summit Treks company, which is providing her logiscis, told Reuters.
Harila could break Nirmal Purja’s record, who completed all these peaks in six months and one week in 2019, by climbing all 14 peaks taller than 8,000 metres by sometime in July.
"That is the target and I think I can do it," she told Reuters in May in Kathmandu.
Climbing all 14 highest peaks is a difficult task and is normally done by many climbers in years.
However, renowned climber Mingma G claimed that Harila’s team is using helicopters to move sherpas to higher camps, opening the route from above rather than working their way up the mountain.
“Happening on Manaslu now. A new model of climbing is developing in Nepal. No climbing record is pure now. I won’t be surprised if some people make Manaslu’s summit tomorrow or the day after, climbing is easier by flying a helicopter to Camp 1, 2, and 3. Climbing down is easier than up. Good technique. This is also ruining Sherpas’ historical name and fame,” Mingma G said in an Instagram post.
“I received this video of a helicopter dropping climbers and goods to Camp 2 from local people in Samagaon. It’s from yesterday. I was surprised to read climbers climbed from Base Camp to Camp 3 in a single day on Annapurna. I can now see why The Himalayan Database stopped recording 8,000m climbing information,” he added.