Sherpa mountain guide Kami Rita , returning from Mount Everest after his record 30th successful ascent, is seen at the Kathmandu airport on May 24. – Photos: AP
“I am glad for the record, but records are eventually broken,” Kami Rita said after his successful climb.Dubbed the “Everest Man”, he has held the record since 2018 and his closest rival is now three summits back. The community’s most famous son, Tenzing Norgay, made the first successful climb of Everest’s 8,849m peak alongside New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary in 1953.
A guide for about four decades, Kami Rita first reached the summit in 1994 while working for a commercial expedition, and has repeated the feat almost every year since. “We now see rock exposed in areas where there used to be snow before. Not just on Everest, other mountains are also losing their snow and ice. It is worrying,” he told AFP in 2022.