Nepal's First Female Helicopter Long-Line Rescuer Also Holds the Women's Everest Speed Record — Meet Phunjo Jhangmu Lama

Phunjo Jhangmu Lama does two of the most dangerous jobs in the Himalaya — and she is either the first or the fastest at both. She is Nepal's first female helicopter long-line rescuer, the person who hangs on a cable slung beneath a hovering helicopter to pluck stranded climbers straight off the mountain, and she holds the women's world record for the fastest ascent of Mount Everest, climbing from Base Camp to the 8,849-metre summit in 14 hours and 31 minutes. Both are real, documented and rare, and both were achieved in a field that has been overwhelmingly male for as long as people have climbed in Nepal.

Who she is

Phunjo Jhangmu Lama grew up in Chokangparo, a village in the remote Tsum Valley of Gorkha district, tucked into the same Manaslu massif that our trekkers cross on the restricted-area circuit. She became the first woman from that region to stand on top of Everest, and she has since summited Manaslu, Cho Oyu — reportedly without supplemental oxygen — Denali in Alaska, Ama Dablam, Island Peak and Lobuche, according to her Wikipedia biography and a detailed UKClimbing interview. Along the way the Nepal government handed her the Tenzing–Hillary Award, the country's highest mountaineering honour, and named her a tourism goodwill ambassador.

What a long-line rescue actually is

Most people picture a mountain rescue as a helicopter landing on a ledge. At Himalayan altitude that is often impossible — there is nowhere flat, the air is too thin for the rotors to bite, and a casualty may be pinned on a slope or in a crevasse. The alternative is the long line: a rope, sometimes tens of metres of it, fixed under the aircraft with a rescuer clipped to the end. The helicopter flies the rescuer in like a pendulum, the rescuer secures the injured climber, and both are flown out dangling in open air. It demands nerve, precise communication with the pilot, and the ability to work while hypoxic and freezing. Phunjo trained for it in the Swiss Alps, where the technique was pioneered, and brought it home — becoming, as multiple Nepali outlets and her Wikipedia entry state, the first Nepali woman qualified to do it.

The record, in numbers

Phunjo first set the women's Everest speed record in 2018. Hong Kong's Ada Tsang took it in 2021. In May 2024 Phunjo took it back — and rewrote it emphatically. She left Base Camp in the afternoon and reached the summit before dawn the next morning, an ascent of 14 hours 31 minutes, then descended in a little over nine hours for a round trip of 24 hours 26 minutes.

To put 14 hours 31 minutes in context: a typical guided summit push from Base Camp, staged across the intermediate camps with rest and acclimatisation, unfolds over several days. Phunjo compressed the vertical part of that into a single overnight effort.

Why it matters

Nepal's high-altitude economy — guiding, rope-fixing, rescue flying — has been almost entirely a men's world. The porters, the Sherpa climbing guides, the icefall doctors and the rescue crews are overwhelmingly male, and the risks are real: more people die descending Everest than ascending it, as we've written about before. A woman holding the speed record and qualifying as the first female long-line rescuer is not a symbolic footnote — it is a working professional doing the hardest, most exposed jobs on the mountain and outperforming the field. For the next generation of girls in villages like Chokangparo, that is a template that simply did not exist a decade ago.

Trekking the Everest region safely — with a local team

You will not be speed-climbing anything. But the Khumbu that made Phunjo is open to any reasonably fit walker, and the way to see it well is with the same local guides, porters and rescue relationships that underpin her world. Our 14-day Everest Base Camp Trek runs in small groups of 2–12 people, from $1,850 per person for a solo booking and dropping to $1,350 per person once your group reaches eight — every departure with a licensed Nepali guide, insured porters and helicopter-evacuation contingency built in. For the fuller picture of routes, permits and acclimatisation, read our Everest Base Camp trek guide and our Everest region guide.

Records are set by exceptional people. Getting to the foot of the same mountain, safely, is something we can arrange for you.

Sources: Wikipedia — Phunjo Jhangmu Lama; The Kathmandu Post; CNN Travel; UKClimbing.

Cover photo: a helicopter departing Everest Base Camp in Nepal's Khumbu region — the kind of high-altitude aircraft flown on the rescue missions Phunjo Jhangmu Lama trained for. Photo by Daniel Oberhaus via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Not a photograph of Phunjo Lama.