Female Climbers Race for World Record.
Two lady mountaineers are set to scale Annapurna, known one of the most challenging summits of the Himalayas, and set the record of becoming the first woman to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains.Oh Yun Sun from South Korea and Edurne Pasaban from Spain are only two mountaineers among several other female climbers who are vying to make the ascent to the summit beyond 8,000 meters.
Oh Yun Sun, 43, is determined to set the world record. “I intend to make not only my own country proud, but the rest of Asia as well,” the mountaineer declared in a recent interview during her arrival in Kathmandu for the said expedition. Miss Oh is currently the leading contender for the world record, having scaled 13 out of the 14 highest peaks in the Himalayas.
On the other hand, her main competitor from Spain, Pasaban, is left to scale two mountain peaks—Annapurna and Shishapangma in Tibet—which she is looking forward to complete during the April-May monsoon season.
The 10th-highest summit in the world, Annapurna stands a little over 8,000 meters above sea level. Being an avalanche-prone area, the summit is considered as one of the world’s most dangerous peaks, claiming a fatality rate of 40% among its climbers, proving it to be a much more hazardous area than Mount Everest.
Italy’s Reinhold Messner holds the current record of being the first person to scale the 14 highest mountains in 1986, but this record has yet to be equalled by a female climber.