KATHMANDU, APRIL 27
A Chinese woman climber stood atop Mt Shishapangma in Tibet becoming the first woman climber in the world to complete all 14 peaks above 8,000m.
Dong Hong Juan successfully reached the real summit of the 8,027-metre peak yesterday. According to 8000ers.com's updated list of 14x8000ers, Dong Hong Juan thus becomes the first woman to reach the true summits of all the peaks.
She repeated Mt Manaslu, Mt Dhaulagiri, Broad Peak, Mt Annapurna and Mt Shishapangma to reach the real summits, according to Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, Managing Director at Imagine Nepal Treks. "Dong climbed most of the 8000m peaks with us from 2015 to 2023," he added.
Eberhard Jurgalski's team stated that Edurne Pasaban (traditionally, the first female 14×8000'er summiter) and Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (the first who did all 14 without supplemental oxygen) didn't reach the true summits of Manaslu and Dhaulagiri.
However, 8000ers.com's updated classification is not unanimously accepted in the mountaineering community, and there has been a heated debate since it was published. Institutions such as the Himalayan Database are not willing to change history. Some argue that the climbers believed that they had reached the highest points of their targeted peaks.
Now, the debate will possibly increase. Dong not only snatched the distinction from the historical summiters, but from the three other women who stood on the summit of Shishapangma yesterday. Both Kristin Harila and Sophie Lavaud bagged their 13th 8,000'er and were a step away from being the first woman themselves. Viridiana Alvarez, also in the group, was on her 9th 8,000'er, according to Sherpa.
Dong Hong Juan's Summit success:
Everest in 2013
Cho Oyu in 2014
Gasherbrum-II in 2014
K2 in 2017
Nanga Parbat in 2017
Gasherbrum-I in 2017
Kanchenjunga in 2018
Lhotse in 2018
Broad Peak in 2018
Annapurna in 2021
Makalu in 2022
Dhaulagiri in 2022
Manaslu in 2022
Shishapangma in 2023
