KATHMANDU: Less than two weeks after scaling Mount Kanchenjunga, climber Shehroze Kashif summited the world’s fourth-highest peak, Mount Lhotse (8,516m), in Nepal on Monday.
Hailing from Lahore, 20-year-old Kashif was part of the Seven Summit Treks expedition team which summited directly from camp 3. The young mountaineer and his team had started the summit push on Sunday.
The achievement comes days after Kashif conquered Mount Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest peak. He has made history by being the youngest mountaineer to summit the world’s three highest peaks — Everest (8,849m), K2 (8,611m) and Kanchenjunga (8,586m).
He is also the youngest Pakistani to have climbed Broad Peak (8,047m) at the age of 17. He used supplemental oxygen on his climbs at Broad Peak, the Everest and K2. His first climb was at the age of 11 when he climbed Makra Peak (3,885m), followed by Musa Ka Musalla (4,080m).
Continuing to train for longer and harder treks, he did the Gondogoro La K2 Base Camp trek at the age of 14, and at 15 he was able to complete the Khurdo Pin Pass (5,800m) trek. At 18, he did Khusar Gang, a 6,050m peak Alpine style. Meanwhile, mountaineer Abdul Joshi from Gilgit-Baltistan successfully summited Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, on Monday morning. Joshi, who hails from Hunza’s Shimshal valley, was part of a 13-member expedition team led by Nepalese mountaineer Mingma Gyalje Sherpa (Mingma G) of Imagine Nepal.
The manager of Imagine Nepal, Dawa Futi Sherpa, told media that team members included Abdul Joshi, Liu Wenwei, Hai Qiannan, Feng Jianfei and Zhan Xiongchang from China, Anna Surysheva from Russia, Nathan Peter Longman from Australia, Marina Cortes from Poland, Gabriel Tarso from Brazil, Montana from Thailand, Raju Lama, Ramkumar Shrestha and Suraj Paudyal from Nepal.
Dawa Futi Sherpa confirmed that the expedition team reached the top of Everest at 6:40am on Monday. She said the team members had started the summit push from camp 4 at 9pm on Sunday.
Following the successful attempt, the team returned to camp 4 and is expected to descend to camp 2 on Tuesday, eventually returning to base camp on May 18.
Secretary Alpine Club Of Pakistan, Karrar Haidri, in a statement congratulated Joshi for his successful feat. Known in the community as “Path Finder” for his extraordinary talent of finding new routes, Joshi was the first person in the world to cross F.N./Joshi Pass and Verjerav Pass. Joshi is also the first Pakistani to have summated Annapurna, the tenth-highest mountain in the world (8,091m), in 2021. He also led a 12-member Pakistani team to the first-ever summit of Passu cones. –Agencies
