Ang Rita Sherpa

Ang Rita Sherpa climbed Everest for the final time on May 23, 1996, twelve days after the disaster that took the lives of eight climbers. He was supporting a Swedish expedition led by Göran Kropp, who that same day made a solo, unsupported ascent without bottled oxygen, the capstone of a journey Kropp had begun seven months earlier by pedaling a 238-pound bicycle out of Stockholm and riding roughly eight thousand miles to Base Camp. Kropp had made a first summit push on May 3, turned back one hundred meters from the top because the hour was too late, then joined the rescue efforts after the May 10–11 storm before trying again.

It was Ang Rita’s tenth summit of Everest and the veteran mountain guide did not use bottled oxygen to ascend the peak that day. This was not a particularly big deal for him. Ang Rita didn’t use bottled oxygen during any of his previous nine summit pushes either, including his first. His ten summits of Everest