Posted on 05/24/2010 4:01:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
KATHMANDU (AFP) – More than 200 climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest at the weekend, taking advantage of good weather conditions in the final days of the climbing season, a Nepalese official said Monday.
Dozens more are now in a race to conquer the world's highest peak before the brief season comes to an end later this week, Tilak Pandey told AFP by telephone from Everest Base Camp.
"About 216 climbers have summited Everest over the weekend and at least 30 more are expected to climb tomorrow," said Pandey, an official with the Nepal mountaineering department.
The figures do not include those climbing from the Tibet side of the mountain, the route chosen by American 13-year-old Jordan Romero, who on Saturday became the youngest person ever to climb Everest.
Authorities in Nepal do not register climbs from Tibet, but the mountaineering website explorersweb.com reported that Austria's Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner had reached the summit from that side early Monday.
If confirmed, that leaves Kaltenbrunner with just one more mountain to climb to achieve her goal of becoming one of an elite group of mountaineers to have scaled the world's 14 highest peaks.
South KoreanOh Eun-Sun last month became the first woman to scale all 14 peaks above 8,000 metres (26,000 feet), closely followed by Spain's Edurne Pasapan a week ago.
Around 2,900 people have climbed Mount Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to conquer the 8,848-metre peak in 1953.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
and how many hundred will it take to clean up after them?
Id rather Mount Palin
Thirteen-year-old American boy Jordan Romero (R) and his climbing team member Karma Sherpa pose for a photo at the peak of world's highest mountain Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma, in the Tibet Autonomous Region May 22, 2010. Romero reached the peak of Mount Everest on Saturday and became the youngest climber to scale the 8,850 metres (29,035 feet) Everest summit. Picture taken May 22, 2010. REUTERS/Team Romero (CHINA - Tags: SOCIETY)
Blame it on Global Warming.
Technology and Timing..
and Luck, Lots of Luck.
Honestly I don’t know why anyone would want to do it at all. When you’re standing in line with hundreds of other people doing the same thing, “special” doesn’t really factor into it any more.
Less people have mowed my lawn.
This is getting boring. Norgay & Hillary did it first. That’s all that matters. Sorry, I’m not impressed.
Mountains are for goats.. I’ll take a nice balmy beach somewhere.
“Norgay & Hillary did it first.”
That must have annoyed Bill!;)
No kidding have you ever heard OMG look at that fine looking women in that snow suit over there
I’ve watched the series about climing Everest and mostly I’m struck by the pure selfishness of it.
Back in the days of a single team making the attempt I can understand leaving an injured climber behind to die. But these days there will be hundreds of people on the mountain and they still are left to die. They claim to care but they’ll step over a dying climber just to spend a few minutes at the top of the mountain.
Hundreds in a weekend! Why not just FLY over and take a picture?
They should just put up a chairlift and charge admission.
There's a 'first wife' joke in there somewhere but I can't quite put me finger on it.
Is there a freakin’ Starbucks there yet?
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