Legendary Nepali mountaineer Kami Rita Sherpa has climbed Mount Everest for a record 32nd time, once again surpassing his own mark as the most prolific climber of the world's highest peak. Known widely as the "Everest Man," Kami Rita first reached the 8,849-metre summit in 1994 and has since built a career that spans more than three decades of high-altitude mountaineering, with over 40 summits of peaks above 8,000 metres to his name. Mount Everest sits on the border of Nepal and Tibet and is the centrepiece of the Himalayan mountain range.

The record-breaking ascent took place during the busy spring climbing season, which draws mountaineers from around the world to take advantage of stable weather windows. Officials reported that a record 270 climbers and guides successfully reached the summit from the Nepal side in a single day earlier in the week, underlining both the mountain's enduring appeal and the logistical scale of modern Everest expeditions. The season has not been without tragedy, however: two Indian climbers were reported to have died while descending the mountain after reaching the summit.

Also making history this week was British mountaineer Kenton Cool, who completed his 20th Everest summit — extending his own record for the most climbs by a non-Sherpa. Cool reached the top at around 4 am local time alongside his Sherpa guide Dorjee Gyelzen. Expedition organiser Lukas Furtenbach, himself a four-time Everest climber, praised Cool's achievement, calling it "more Everest summits than any non-Sherpa ever" and describing it as making the climb look like "just another walk in the hills."

The milestones come more than seven decades after New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, became the first known people to reach Everest's summit in May 1953. Kami Rita's extraordinary record is a testament to both the technical expertise of the Sherpa community, whose members have long been the backbone of Himalayan expeditions, and to one individual's remarkable dedication to a mountain he has returned to, on average, nearly once a year for his entire adult life.