OK, not really hiking, but mountaineering. There are only 14 mountains in the world with peaks over 8000 m above sea level. In 1986, the legendary mountain climber Reinhold Messner became the first person to climb all of them. It took him 16 years, 3 months, and 19 days to finish. The following year another legendary climber, Jerzy Kukuczka, finished all 8000 peaks, taking just 7 years, 11 months, and 14 days to do it. Since then, only 41 people have accomplished this feat, but none did it faster until in 2013 when Kim Chang-Ho beat Jerzy's record by 39 days (1.33% faster).
That is until this year when Nirmal Purja, former British Gurkha soldier from Nepal, accomplish this feat in an incredible 189 days, beating the old record by 2678 days or by 93.4%! It's not too often you see a record broken by that margin. Along the way he set a number of other climbing records such as hiking from the summit of Everest (#1) to the summit of Lhotse (#4) in just 12 hours. Of course that's "only" a 2 mile hike, but almost all of it is above 8000 m. But then he descended all the way to the bottom of the mountain and climbed Makalu (#5) in just 2 days. Read all about it here.
But perhaps he is most famous as being the photographer who snapped this viral image of the traffic jam on the summit of Everest last May when a number of people died due to spending too much time in the "death zone" above 8000 m.
That is until this year when Nirmal Purja, former British Gurkha soldier from Nepal, accomplish this feat in an incredible 189 days, beating the old record by 2678 days or by 93.4%! It's not too often you see a record broken by that margin. Along the way he set a number of other climbing records such as hiking from the summit of Everest (#1) to the summit of Lhotse (#4) in just 12 hours. Of course that's "only" a 2 mile hike, but almost all of it is above 8000 m. But then he descended all the way to the bottom of the mountain and climbed Makalu (#5) in just 2 days. Read all about it here.
But perhaps he is most famous as being the photographer who snapped this viral image of the traffic jam on the summit of Everest last May when a number of people died due to spending too much time in the "death zone" above 8000 m.