Norwegian climber hopes to become world’s fastest to all 14 tallest peaks

By Gopal Sharma

-A Norwegian woman climbed Mount Manaslu in Nepal on Saturday, her ninth highest mountain in 45 days, a hiking official said and was on track to become the fastest mountaineer to climb the world’s 14 tallest peaks in three months.

Kristin Harila, 37, scaled Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest at 8,163 metres (26,781 feet) in west Nepal with Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa and five other guides before dawn.

She climbed Shishapangma in Tibet region of China on April 26 and has completed Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu and Annapurna in Nepal since then.

She will now head off to Pakistan to climb Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, K2, and the Broad Peak, local sponsors said.

“She is now descending from the summit and will leave for Pakistan with Tenjen, who has been with her on all nine climbs,” Tashi Lakpa Sherpa of the Seven Summit Treks company, which is providing her logiscis, told Reuters.

Harila hopes to finish climbing all 14 peaks taller than 8,000 metres (26,246 feet) by sometime in July and if successful she would set the fastest climber record by beating Nirmal Purja from Nepal who completed all these peaks in six months and one week in 2019.

“That is the target and I think I can do it,” she told Reuters in May in Kathmandu.

With Manaslu, her “quest for the 14 summits enters a new phase”, a post in her website said.

Climbing all 14 highest peaks in a few months is a challenging feat, which is normally done by many climbers in years.