73-year-old Japanese betters record to remain oldest woman atop Everest
Mount conqueror: In this May 9, 2002 file photo, Tamae Watanabe (right)
of Japan poses with a photograher Noriyuki Muraguchi at a base camp on
the foot of Mt. Everest in Nepal. A 73-year-old Watanabe has climbed
Mount Everest, smashing her own record to again become the oldest woman
to scale the world's highest mountain. (AP/Office Seven Summits, File)
KATHMANDU: At an age when most women keep busy playing
with their grandchildren or take to gardening, a 73-year-old Japanese
pensioner on Saturday bettered her decade-long record to remain the
oldest woman to conquer the 8,848m Mount Everest.
Tamae Watanabe's feat came four years after 76-year-old Nepalese Min Bahadur Sherchan became the oldest man to scale Everest. She first became the oldest woman to scale the peak in May 2002, a record earlier held by Poland's Anna Czerwinska, who had scaled the peak at a sprightly 50.
Watanabe, who had set off from Kathmandu over a month ago for the expedition, took the north ridge route to the peak from the Tibet side. "This (Saturday) morning at 7am (Nepal time) she reached the top," said Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking mountaineering agency that managed the expedition's logistics.
Tshering said Watanabe, a resident of Yamanashi prefecture, and her four-member team, including Japanese mountaineer-photographer Noriyuki Muraguchi, had left their last high altitude camp (8,300m) on Friday night and climbed all night before reaching the peak.
Reports said Watanabe had initially tried to scale the peak four days earlier, but strong winds forced her to change her plans twice.
A Nepalese official said weather had been so bad this season that a summit wave from Nepal's southeast ridge route only began on Friday when 30 climbers reached the top a week behind schedule. "Several climbers abandoned summit plans in the past weeks due to bad weather," he told the Japanese news agency Kyodo.
Junko Tabei was the first Japanese woman to climb the peak in 1975.
New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay scaled the peak for the first time in 1953. Around 3,000 people, including a blind person, a man with an artificial limb, a 13-year-old American boy, have since climbed Everest.
Every year hundreds of people set out to climb the peak in April. May is considered the best month to climb Everest, when climbers get about two windows of good weather for their bid for the summit.
Tamae Watanabe's feat came four years after 76-year-old Nepalese Min Bahadur Sherchan became the oldest man to scale Everest. She first became the oldest woman to scale the peak in May 2002, a record earlier held by Poland's Anna Czerwinska, who had scaled the peak at a sprightly 50.
Watanabe, who had set off from Kathmandu over a month ago for the expedition, took the north ridge route to the peak from the Tibet side. "This (Saturday) morning at 7am (Nepal time) she reached the top," said Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking mountaineering agency that managed the expedition's logistics.
Tshering said Watanabe, a resident of Yamanashi prefecture, and her four-member team, including Japanese mountaineer-photographer Noriyuki Muraguchi, had left their last high altitude camp (8,300m) on Friday night and climbed all night before reaching the peak.
Reports said Watanabe had initially tried to scale the peak four days earlier, but strong winds forced her to change her plans twice.
A Nepalese official said weather had been so bad this season that a summit wave from Nepal's southeast ridge route only began on Friday when 30 climbers reached the top a week behind schedule. "Several climbers abandoned summit plans in the past weeks due to bad weather," he told the Japanese news agency Kyodo.
Junko Tabei was the first Japanese woman to climb the peak in 1975.
New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay scaled the peak for the first time in 1953. Around 3,000 people, including a blind person, a man with an artificial limb, a 13-year-old American boy, have since climbed Everest.
Every year hundreds of people set out to climb the peak in April. May is considered the best month to climb Everest, when climbers get about two windows of good weather for their bid for the summit.
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