Luo Jing (in 2016)

Also from the eight-thousander Shishapangma in Tibet, the first summit successes of this fall season were reported today. According to their own announcement, a team of the Russian expedition operator “7 Summits Club” reached the 8,027-meter-high summit , as did a team of the Nepalese operator “Seven Summit Treks”. SST-Board director Dawa Sherpa informed on Facebook, that Chinese Luo Jing was among those who stood on the summit of Shishapangma. It was the last of the 14 eight-thousanders that the 42-year-old still lacked in her collection.

All 14 in almost seven years

Luo (r.) on K2 in 2014

After South Korean Oh Eun-sun, Spaniard Edurne Pasaban, Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and  Italian Nives Meroi, Luo is now the fifth woman to have scaled all 14 eight-thousanders. Kaltenbrunner and Meroi did all their ascents without bottled oxygen. Luo Jing scaled her first eight-thousander in fall 2011: Manaslu. Since then, hardly a year passed without her successes on eight-thousanders. In less than seven years she completed the 14. In 2012, she stood on top of Makalu, in 2013 on the summits of Kangchenjunga, Gasherbrum I and II. In 2014, the Chinese scaled Dhaulagiri and K2, in 2016 Annapurna, Mount Everest and Cho Oyu. In 2017 Luo summited Lhotse, in summer 2018 Nanga Parbat and Broad Peak and now in fall Shishapangma.

“Mountains accepted me”

“After climbing so many mountains, I realized that I did not conquer the mountains, but the mountains accepted me,” the computer expert from Beijing told the newspaper “China Daily” last summer after her success on Broad Peak. Luo Jing is the first woman from China in the “14 Eight-Thousanders Club”.

Her compatriot Zhang Liang was the first Chinese to complete the 8000ers collection in 2017. This summer, he was the second person after South Korean Park Joung-Seok to succeed in the so-called “True Explorers Grand Slam”: he scaled Denali, the highest mountain of North America, and thus the last mountain of the “Seven Summits” still missing from him. Thus the 54-year-old had climbed all eight-thousanders as well as the highest mountains of all continents – and also reached the North and South Pole.

Update 4 October: According to a Spanish climber, who was also on Shishapangma at that time, Luo Jing reached “only” the 8008-meter-high central summit, not the main summit. Should this be confirmed, she would not have completed the 14 eight-thousanders yet.

First have a shoeshine

Call me old fashioned. But for me, the special appeal of expeditions is also to leave everyday’s comfort zone and live a simpler life in the mountains, in the ice or anywhere else. This must not mean that you have to mutate into a caveman. But if, as happened recently on Mount Kilimanjaro, I see Korean mountaineers who, just after arriving at the Kibo Hut at 4,720 meters, first let local helpers dust off their shoes, I can only shake my head. Not as embarrassing, but similarly disturbing, I feel it when a tent camp on a mountain hardly differs from your own apartment. Even on Mount Everest!

Real bed and laptop workplace

Luxury tent for Everest BC

This spring, the Russian expedition operator “7 Summits Club” boasts about a so-called “luxury camp” on the Tibetan north side of the highest mountain in the world. Each expedition member is provided his own spacious and heated two-chamber tent. There is a carpet and a real bed with a wooden frame including down bedclothes in the “bedroom” and a laptop workplace with table and chair in the “anteroom”. “The climber should restore his strength as much as possible, should not get sick, should keep his high moral spirit and desire to go to the end,” the operator justifies the luxury in Everest Base Camp.

Not yet the end of the line

Everest ascent support of tomorrow?

However, this could also backfire. What if the pampered climbers suddenly have no more desire to give up their luxury accommodation? Maybe they even want to add a third chamber to their private tent, for shower and toilet, the latter of course with a heated seat. And why must well-being be limited to the base camp? The hitherto poorly equipped high camps could also be pepped up with floor heating and four-poster bed. And while you’re at it, why can the fixed ropes not be replaced by tow ropes, as they are used in children’s ski lifts? Jumars would be superfluous, struggling on the ascent would come to an end. Also moving sidewalks as used on big airports would be an option. So it’s not yet the end of the luxury line. However, the Chinese-Tibetan authorities would have to raise the Everest electricity fee of $ 50 per climber. Otherwise, they will soon be in the red.