She Climbed Everest Three Times in 13 Days. No Woman Had Ever Done It Twice.
Nepali photojournalist Purnima Shrestha set a world first on Everest in 2024 — and this May she went back up for a sixth summit altogether.
No woman had ever stood on top of Mount Everest twice in the same season. In May 2024, Purnima Shrestha did it three times — on the 12th, the 19th and the 25th, thirteen days apart, each ascent from the mountain’s south side in Nepal. Guinness World Records confirmed it as the most Everest ascents by a woman in a single season. Two years later, on 20 May 2026, she went back up for a sixth Everest summit altogether, and this March, Guinness handed her the certificate in person on International Women’s Day.
Key facts
- Three Everest summits in 13 days — 12, 19 and 25 May 2024, all from the Nepal (south) side
- Guinness World Records certified the feat on 8 March 2026, International Women’s Day
- Sixth career Everest summit reached 20 May 2026
- Eight of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks climbed in total, including K2, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse and Makalu
Shrestha is from Arughat, in Gorkha district, a few valleys west of the Annapurna range. She worked as a photojournalist covering expeditions before she became one of the climbers she was photographing. Her first 8,000m summit was Manaslu, on 26 September 2017, less than a two-day drive from her home village. She stood on Everest for the first time the following year.
In 2021 she climbed Annapurna I and, that October, Dhaulagiri alongside fellow Nepali climber Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita — the first Nepali women to summit either mountain. By 2024 she had turned to Everest with a target no woman had attempted: three full ascents in one short weather window, meaning three separate climbs from lower camps back up through the Khumbu Icefall while hundreds of other climbers funnelled through the same fixed ropes during the same narrow spring window. ‘I overcame those challenges and this recognition has inspired me a lot,’ she said after Guinness certified the record. ‘I hope it will help promote gender equality.’
Her first 8,000m summit, 26 September.
Her first of what would become six ascents.
First Nepali woman to summit either peak.
12, 19 and 25 May — a world first for any woman.
Guinness confirms the record on 8 March; she summits again on 20 May.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
You will never need to climb the Khumbu Icefall three times in a fortnight, but Shrestha’s route is a reminder of just how much terrain sits above where most travellers ever go. Our own 14-day Everest Base Camp trek ends at 5,364m, roughly 3,500m below her summit — and even that altitude demands proper acclimatisation days, which is exactly why NMA-certified guides build rest days into every itinerary rather than rushing the schedule the way an underprepared trekker might on their own. If you want to stand in the shadow of the mountain she has now climbed six times, that trail is the one to take.
Climbers who want a taste of the terrain below her route without the crevasses can also look at the Ama Dablam Base Camp trek, up the valley Shrestha herself trained on early in her career, or the Manaslu Circuit, past the mountain where her 8,000m career began in 2017. Related reading: our report on the youngest man and woman to climb all 14 eight-thousanders.
Source: The Diplomat Nepal
Cover photo: VANNGO Ng via Pexels (Pexels License).
Source: The Diplomat Nepal
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