Destinations Lhakpa Sherpa - Mountain Queen 16th December, 2024

Slowly, quietly, steadily there are women who are changing the world and inspiring others, one at a time as they achieve incredible feats. Pasang Lhamu Sherpa was the first Nepali woman to climb Everest, and she did it to inspire other Nepali women, to show them that women can conquer this mountain too, despite what their customs and families tell them. She and her team died just below the summit in 1993, during her fourth attempt to climb Mount Everest, when bad weather came in quickly cutting off their route and preventing them from being rescued. Her legacy has not been forgotten. She has been recognised posthumously with numerous honours, the most recent of which was the naming of an important mountain on the moon, Lhamu, and has inspired many women in Nepal, one of which was Lhakpa Sherpa.

A new documentary released on Netflix in July follows Lhakpa Sherpa on her 10th ascent of Everest and delves into her life and how she came to be one of the most famous Nepali Sherpas. Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa is a documentary directed by another notable woman, Lucy Walker, who has won over 100 awards for her character-driven non-fiction documentaries.

Born from Yak farmers in Shersong, Yak Kharka, Lhakpa Sherpa comes from the Annapurna region of Nepal and was born with something to prove. Her village lies on the trekking route up Makalu and the mountains are very much a part of who she is. The Sherpa people live on the slopes of the Himalayas in Nepal, spending their lives living at high altitude and battling harsh conditions in remote places.

One of eleven children, Lhakpa was named for the day of the week she was born, Wednesday, and whilst girls were not allowed to go to school, she carried her little brother for hours there and back each day. This early toil instilled not only a love of the outdoors but also a thirst for the mountains that continues to drive her even now. She is not a woman that likes being told no and to this day fights to be seen and heard. Being born and raised at altitude, in addition to these hours of trekking each day, is what makes Lhakpa in particular, and the Sherpa people in general uniquely suited to guiding expeditions, maintaining routes, supporting as porters and being able to live in conditions others usually struggle with.

Too tall and too bossy for an arranged marriage, according to her mother, when the men in her village started to become porters for the increasing amount of ‘blonde people’ passing through on their quest to climb the nearby mountains they refused to let her join them as she was a woman. So Lhakpa cut her hair, donned a hat and dressed like a boy, picked up 100kg pack and followed them until she became a porter herself by osmosis and was able to do what she loved all day every day. This tenacity is what has spurred her up Everest 10 times, a world record for being the woman with the most ascents. Her grit and determination leave no room for failure and she carries the weight of her responsibility to other women on her shoulders.

From her secret life as a porter to ‘kitchen boy’, where she learned English, Lhakpa became pregnant in her 20’s and had a son before moving to the city to escape from the shame of being an unwed mother. She cleaned houses in exchange for food before entering a running race where she won first prize and used the money to start a tea shop. Here she asked everyone, what do I need to do to climb Everest?! She finally met someone who introduced her to the Prime Minister of Nepal who heard her plea and instructed an expedition to be put together.

This is how her very first Everest trip came about. She fought for it, every day, every moment, every opportunity.

Lhakpa Sherpa never set out to become famous. She heard the mountains calling and wanted to spend her life in the great outdoors despite her humble origins, her families expectations, her sex and her illiteracy.

Each and every milestone she has achieved has been driven by an unwavering desire to spend her life in the mountains that she loves and to prove to other women, most notably her daughters, that women are limited only by their own minds. She didn’t set out to climb Everest 10 times but has grabbed every opportunity she came across with both hands to push herself further, in an attempt to create a better life for herself and her children. Her achievements are listed below.

In May 2000 Lhakpa became the first Nepali women to summit Mount Everest and survive on an expedition sponsored by Asian Trekking called the Nepali Women Millennium Expedition. Following in the footsteps of her hero Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, Lhakpa refused to give in even after all her fellow female climbers returned to base camp. She summited on 18th May 2000 by climbing the southeast col – the only remaining woman in the expedition to do so.

The following season on 23rd May 2001 she summited from the north col side becoming the first woman to summit twice and the second person to summit from both sides. In 2003 she climbed Everest with her brother Mingma Gelu Sherpa and her sister Ming Kipa Sherpa who became the youngest person to summit Everest at 15 years old. They climbed from the Tibetan side as Nepali law prohibited people under 16 climbing Everest. They also made the world record for the most siblings to summit together and Lhakpa became the woman with the most Everest summits.

She climbed Everest 5 times with her husband, a Romanian-US mountaineer, who she met in Kathmandu shortly after summited Everest in 2000. Her most recent expeditions have only been possible through crowdfunding and via money saved from working at various low-wage jobs in the US where she lives with her two daughters.

Her 10th climb in 2023 was a lifetime achievement for Lhakpa who always said she wanted to climb Everest 10 times, awarding her the most Everest summits by a woman.

The Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award is the highest adventure accolade given in India and is named after Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who summited Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953. The award is given to recipients for “outstanding achievement in the field of adventure activities on land, sea and air" and was awarded to Lhakpa in 2023 for her mountaineering achievements. To find out more about other remarkable Nepali mountaineers, check out our blog.

In 2023, aged 49, Lhakpa Sherpa summited K2, the deadliest mountain in the world for the first time in a record year for successful Nepali Sherpa summits. K2 has the highest death rate of any 8,000m+ mountain and is one of the 14 highest mountains in the world.

Most recently, Lhakpa has started her own trekking company offering guided walks in the forested mountains of New England from her home in Connecticut. Further afield she offers her service as a guide in her home country of Nepal, taking people up Mount Everest, Manaslu, Makalu and on other iconic trekking routes in Nepal. Each and every penny goes towards supporting her family first and towards saving for her next expedition up her favourite mountain.

This year, 2024, has seen the release of the documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa and is a demonstration of Lhakpa’s determination and grit in the face of adversity. Director Lucy Walker has combined footage of Lhakpa spanning two decades to provide a fascinating account of an inspiring Nepali woman who can’t read but speaks five languages, a woman who has climbed the tallest mountain in the world 10 times and who is helping others to climb Mount Everest. She has no plans to stop heeding the call of the mountains.

Read about another inspirational woman taking on massive mountains in our blog about Kristin Harila, the Norwegian mountaineer breaking records faster than they can be made.

The team at Kandoo had the special honour of meeting Lhakpa briefly at Kendal Mountain Festival in November 2024 where she was a guest speaker at an intimate screening of this awe-inspiring documentary. Of the inspirational women who have conquered Everest, she is a particular favourite whose relentless positivity and drive are contagious and her love for the mountains is something we feel we share with her.