Pasang Dawa Sherpa: The Nepali Sherpa guide, who has become world's second person to scale Everest 26 times

Climbing Mount Everest is no easy task. Imagine doing it 26 times! That’s what Nepali sherpa guide Pasang Dawa Sherpa has done, becoming only the second person to do so. Pasang Dawa Sherpa, 46, stood atop the 8,849-metre (29,032-feet) peak, sharing the record number of summits with Kami Rita Sherpa, said Bigyan Koirala, a government tourism official. He reached the top with a Hungarian client, said an official of his employer Imagine Nepal Treks, a hiking company. “They are descending from the top now and are in good shape,” the official, Dawa Futi Sherpa, told Reuters. Born in Pangboche, a village near the Everest base camp, Pasang Dawa completed his first successful climb in 1998.

Kami Rita, who is also climbing on Everest now, could set another record if he makes it to the top. Rita is currently stationed at the Everest base camp and is planning to scale for a record 27th time. The season’s first wave of climbers reached the summit this weekend as Sherpa guides fixed ropes and made paths for the hundreds of climbers who will attempt to scale the peak over the next few weeks. “On Saturday a team of nine rope-fixing climbers from Nepal reached the summit,” said Yuvaraj Khatiwada, director at the Department of Tourism, Nepal. Nineteen mountaineers, including five foreigners, reached the summit of the world’s highest peak this weekend. Dawa Futi said a Pakistani woman, Naila Kiani, who also climbed the peak on Sunday, was the first foreign climber to summit Everest in this year’s climbing season, which runs from March to May. This could not be independently confirmed as many foreign climbers are now headed for the peak, a day after the ropes to the top were fixed. [caption id=“attachment_12596172” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Born in Pangboche, a village near the Everest base camp, Pasang Dawa completed his first successful climb in 1998. Image Courtesy: Imagine Nepal[/caption] Kiani, a 37-year-old banker based in Dubai, had climbed four of the world’s 14 highest mountains before Everest, the Himalayan Times newspaper said. Kiani became the second woman from Pakistan to raise the country’s flag at the world’s highest peak. Samina Baig was the first woman mountaineer from Pakistan to scale the mighty Everest in 2013. Nepal has issued a record of 467 permits this year for foreign climbers seeking to reach the summit of Everest. Each climber is usually accompanied by at least one sherpa guide, fuelling fears that a narrow section below the summit, known as the Hillary Step, could get crowded. **Also Read: Why Nepal's famed Sherpas are leaving Mount Everest behind** Everest has been climbed more than 11,000 times since it was first scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, with about 320 people dying in the effort, according to a Himalayan database and Nepali officials. Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks. In April, three Nepali climbers went missing on Mount Everest after an avalanche buried them in a crevasse. Inputs from Reuters  Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.