Broad Peak

“Mr. 8000” has done it again. “We all are on Broad peak summit,“  Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, expedition leader and head of the Nepalese operator Dreamers Destination wrote on Facebook today. All means according to Mingmas yesterday’s post: ten climbers. The summit success was confirmed by the data from the GPS tracker of John Snorri Sigurjónsson, one of Mingmas clients. For the 31-year-old Mingma, it was already his fourth success on eight-thousanders this year. Previously, the Sherpa had led clients to the summits of Dhaulagiri and Makalu in Nepal last spring and of K2 last Friday. In addition, he had reached with his team the summit ridge of Nanga Parbat not being sure if he had really found the highest point.

His dream: Everest without bottled oxygen

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa

Having added Broad Peak, Mingma has now eleven of the 14 eight-thousanders on his account. Since he forewent bottled oxygen during his ascent on the 8051-meter-high mountain in the Karakorum, he has climbed ten of the 14 highest mountains without breathing mask. “I want to scale Everest at least once without bottled oxygen,” Mingma told me in an interview earlier this year. He has already been on top of the highest mountain on earth five times with breathing mask, three times (in 2011, 2012, 2016) from the Nepalese south side, twice from the Tibetan north side (in 2007, 2010). This year, Mingma has been in total five times above 8000 meters – what a performance! Only a week ago at K2, he had used bottled oxygen, otherwise, according to Mingma, “it would not have been possible to reach the summit.”

Winning formula works

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa is one of more than 40 Nepalese with a certificate from the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (UIAGM). “Our training taught us to focus on safety and security. You can only provide safety and security when you have well tested and technical equipment, well trained staffs, very accurate weather reports”, says Mingma. The winning formula seems to work. Mingma’s track record success story speaks for itself: within a week twelve climbers on the summit of K2 and now again ten on Broad Peak.

P.S.: I’ll leave now for three weeks in order to relax in the mountains – offline. 😉 Then I’m back for you. Promised!