Kathmandu, Nepal — Renowned Sherpa mountain guide Kami Rita returned from Mount Everest on Friday after his record-breaking 30th ascent of the world’s highest peak and vowed to return to the mountain again next year.
The 54-year-old guide had scaled the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak earlier this week, his second time this month, breaking his own record for the most successful ascent of the peak.
“I will continue to climb and I will return next year and for at least one or two more years,” Kami Rita told reporters upon arrival at the airport in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
He said that after retiring from guiding he would continue working in the mountains, but as a team leader or manager at base camp.
He climbed to the top for the first time on May 12 and again on Wednesday. He also climbed Mount Everest twice last year, setting the record for most ascents of the world’s tallest mountain on the first time and extending it less than a week later.
His closest competitor for most ascents of Mount Everest is fellow Sherpa guide Pasang Dawa, who has 27 successful ascents of the mountain.
Kami Rita first climbed Everest in 1994 and has made the trip almost every year since. He is one of many Sherpa guides whose experience and skills are vital to the safety and success each year of foreign climbers who aspire to reach the top of the mountain.
His father was among the first Sherpa mountain guides. In addition to her Everest climbs, Kami Rita has climbed several other peaks that are among the highest in the world, including K2, Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Lhotse.
Officials said more than 500 climbers have already scaled Mount Everest from the southern Nepalese side of the peak this climbing season, which ends in a few days. Most climbing of Everest and the nearby Himalayan peaks is done in April and May, when weather conditions are most favorable.
Everest was first climbed in 1953 by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
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