Everest 2008: Apa Sherpa Summits Mt. Everest For Record 18th Time–UPDATED May 22, 2008

Apa Sherpa has done it again!

Last season he captured his 17th Mt. Everest summit while climbing with the SuperSherpas Expedition–of course he broke his own record then, as well. There really isn’t that many details about this yet, but it will probably hit the press some time tomorrow. In all reality, last season I did follow a bit with the SuperSherpas Expedition. This particular expedition also landed Apa’s climbing partner Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa on the summit. Lhakpa Gelu is a former record holder, as well. He, at one time, owned the record for fasted Mt. Everest summit.

It is great to see Apa back in the news and still doing well–EIGHTEEN TIMES!!! Did I yell that? That is just amazing. Great job, Apa..looking forward to reading about you tomorrow.

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UPDATE

I mentioned that Apa Sherpa would be in the PRESS today for his recent summit success on Everest.  A bit more information is coming out today.  ExplorersWeb has put up a nice piece.  It says that Apa Sherpa summited at 5:45 am on May 22.  Remember that Nepal is roughly 12-13 hours ahead of the United States.  The first part of this post has a date of May 21st.  Just wanted to clear up the confusion.  It would have been roughly 4:45pm-5:45pm here in the States.

ExWeb goes on to say that Apa Sherpa had actually topped out with Ang Mingma Sherpa of Thames this time around.  So how far ahead of the pack is Apa Sherpa?  The next closest person with the most Everest summits is Chuwang Nima Sherpa, with 14–followed closely by Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, who accompanied Apa on last season’s climb to the roof of the world.  Lhakpa Gelu has 13 summits to his credit.

Apa Sherpa was climbing with the ECO-Everest Team this year, even though that wasn’t originally the plan.  Apa Sherpa had heard about their cause to study the effects of global warming and educate the surrounding villagers on the dangers of flooding by run-off melt water.  It probably didn’t have anything to do with his good friend Dawa Steven leading the ECO-Everest team-

The ECO-Everest team will be in route (or, the rest of the team) to Mt. Everest in the coming days, as they just recently topped out on Lhotse and a re looking for the “double summit”, Lhotse then Everest.  Must have some pretty strong climbers in the mix.  Well, we know they have Apa Sherpa, but not everyone is an Apa.

ExplorersWeb has done an excellent job covering this issue, including some pretty interesting articles from the archives–be sure to check those out as well.