Written by Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU, May 22 (Reuters) – A Briton broke his own record on Everest on Friday and made his 20th ascent to the world’s highest peak after two Indian climbers died on the mountain, bringing the number of casualties this season to five, officials said.
Kenton Cole, 52, climbed the 8,849-meter peak before dawn and was descending to lower camps. His trip organizers said he was expected to arrive at base camp over the weekend.
Nivesh Karki of Pioneer Adventures, which organized the expedition, said that an Indian climber died at Camp Two and another at the Hillary Step. He said on Friday that they both climbed the summit on Thursday but died during the descent.
The Hillary Step lies below the summit in the “death zone”, so named because of the dangerously low level of natural oxygen.
No details were available about their deaths.
Karki told Reuters, “One of the bodies is at a very high altitude, and we are trying to recover the second body from the second camp.”
British climber Cole is “quietly rewriting the record books,” said four-time Mount Everest climber and expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach of Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures.
“We have climbed more Everest than any other non-Sherpa peak… and we still make it seem like just another hill walk. An absolute legend,” Furtenbach told Reuters from base camp. Cole stepped up with one of Fortenbach’s teams.
Cole, who first climbed Everest in 2004 and has since repeated the feat every year except for a few years when the authorities closed the mountain for various reasons, said climbing Everest’s height was not routine.
“It doesn’t get easier or less terrifying. It’s the tallest mountain in the world and with it comes an incredible sense of grandeur,” Cole said in a statement.
“I rely on all my experience to move safely in this environment. To stand on top for the twentieth time is very special.”
The record for the most summits on Everest is held by Nepalese Sherpa Kami Rita at the age of 32.
More than 8,000 people have climbed Mount Everest, many of them multiple times, since it was first climbed by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
