Japanese lady breaks her own Everest record on climb

A 73-year-old Japanese woman has climbed to the top of Mount Everest’s, smashing her own record to again become the oldest woman to scale the world’s highest mountain.

Tamae Watanabe reached Everest’s 8,850m-high summit from the northern side of the mountain in Tibet yesterday morning with four other team members, said Ang Tshering, of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association in Nepal.

Watanabe had climbed Everest in 2002, aged 63, to become the oldest woman to scale the mountain. Tshering said Watanabe and her team members are in good condition and are on their way back to the base of the mountain.

Watanabe and her team left the last high altitude camp located at 8,300m on Friday night and climbed all night to reach the summit. The oldest person to climb Everest is a Nepalese man, Min Bahadur Sherchan, who climbed Everest in 2008 at the age of 76.

Weather conditions on the mountain have been challenging this year, prompting several expeditions to cancel their climbs. However, the weather improved this week and teams have begun reaching the summit even from the Nepalese side on the south of the mountain, Nepal’s mountaineering department said.

May is considered the best month to climb Everest, when climbers get about two windows of good weather.