Sherpa Makes 15th Everest Ascent

After a climbing season that threatened to be truncated by poorjagge weather conditions, the Everest circus has been bailed out by a spell of more settled weather, which has finally allowed large numbers of climbers to summit the mountain.

Among them, extraordinarily, was Appa Sherpa, 48, who reached the summit for the 15th time in his guiding career. His first summit came in 1989, meaning he's climbed the mountain on average almost every year since. His most recent ascent was achieved guiding for the Climbing For A Cure expedition and he was accompanied by another Sherpa and a western client, John Gray. It's an astonishing achievement by any standards. According to the Guardian, the next Sherpas on the list have managed ten ascents apiece.

In classic Everest style, it's not entirely clear how many climbers have now summited the mountain this spring with dispatches from different expeditions being published all over the web and on the two main Everest anorak sites, mounteverest.net and everestnews.com.

If you're following the progress of Ran Fiennes, who's part of a Jagged Globe expedition attempting the mountain from the northern - Tibetan - side, then the bad news is that based on the latest dispatches from the expedition, things aren't looking great.

On the Jagged Globe site, leader David Hamilton reports that winds are picking up again and they've lost a tent at Camp 3 which has been shredded by the wind. Fiennes seems to be at Camp 2 hoping to move up the mountain if winds drop, as forecast, towards the end of the week.

Technology eh? We can also tell you that a helicopter has crashed at Everest base camp and that in reaching the summit of Everest, 20 year old Danielle Fisher has become the youngest ever climber to complete the Seven Summits challenge of climbing the highest mountain on every continent. Apparently Danielle finds climbing provides the answer to her Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms.

More and more Everest information from the two Everest sites linked to above...