Records For Oldest And Youngest Women To Summit Everest

This year has already seen numerous successful mountaineering missions in the Himalayas, with several record setters among them.

The bar was set high when a new Everest Base Camp trekking record for youngest climber to reach the 5,364 metre high camp was set by a seven year old Indian boy named Aryan Balaji. The summit itself has also recently seen two new triumphs with the oldest and the youngest women to reach it. They are, respectively, 73-year old Tamae Watanabe, and 16-year old Nima Chemji Sherpa.

The record setter for the oldest woman to scale Mount Everest, Tamae Watanabe, reached the summit on 19 May 2012, after climbing all night with her team of four. A retired office worker, Watanabe lives near Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, and is a seasoned mountaineer – the record she beat this year was her own, which she set in 2002 at the age of 63. She has also climbed five of the other tallest peaks in the world, and is an enthusiastic climber of the Japanese Alps.

Later on the same day, another party reached the summit, made up of members from a team called the High Adventure Expedition 2012. Among them was Nima Chemji Sherpa, a Nepali student who lives in the Kathmandu region. She is also, despite her young age, an experienced climber, having previously scaled Mount Lobuche. She was accompanied by her father, and the expedition safely descended back to Everest Base Camp, trekking to meet the those who enthusiastically awaited her account of the climb. When asked why she wanted to climb Everest, she is reported to have said that she wanted something to fill her free time post-exams.

Congratulations to both of them!