/ 19 May 2012

Granny proves she’s not over the hill by summiting Everest

Tamae Watanabe
Tamae Watanabe

For the second time, a 73-year-old Japanese woman has become the world’s oldest woman to climb Mount Everest, repeating her own record set 10-years ago, the company that organised the climb said on Saturday.

Tamae Watanabe reached the 8 850 metre summit with a Japanese partner and three Nepali Sherpa guides on Saturday morning, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, who runs the Asian Trekking company, which provided logistics to the team.

“Watanabe and other climbers are in good physical condition. They are descending to their last camp which is located at an altitude of 8 300 metres,” he said.

Watanabe, who first became the oldest woman to climb the mountain in 2002 at the age of 63, bettered her own record and set a new climbing feat, Sherpa said. She scaled the peak from the Tibetan side of the mountain.

Mount Everest straddles the Nepal-Tibet border. It has been scaled by 3 700 people since New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa first climbed it in 1953.

The list of climbers includes a blind person, a man with an artificial limb, a 13-year-old American boy and a 76-year-old Nepali man.

About 400 climbers are at camps on both sides of the mountain waiting for improved weather to make their summit attempts. Nepali tourism ministry officials said dozens of mountaineers had also climbed from the Nepali side of the mountain. — Reuters.