This Nepali Woman Climbed Everest Twice This Season. She’s Not Done Yet.

Update, May 28: Shrestha reached Mount Everest’s summit for the third time on Saturday, May 25.

Original story, May 21: Nepali mountaineer Purnima Shrestha reached the summit of Mount Everest on Sunday, May 12 amid howling winds. Shrestha, 33, who summited alongside a guide and climbing Sherpa, encountered no other teams near the top, and the absence of crowds meant she could have savored the experience for 15 or 20 minutes. But Srestha kept her visit short, departing just five minutes after she arrived.

“That’s how the mountain is—0n the way up you’re following a dream that people are willing to risk their lives for. If you die, you don’t care,” Shrestha told Outside. “Then after a brief moment of success, you realize that you need to survive. You really think about your life and value it as you descend.”

Shrestha also knew that she would return to Everest’s pinnacle in a matter of days. And if her Himalayan season went according to plan, she’d reach the summit a third time later in the month. Shrestha is attempting to scale Mount Everest three times in one season, a rare feat in the niche sport of Himalayan mountaineering. If she completes the challenge, Shrestha believes she will be the first woman to do so—something echoed by climber Billi Bierling, the manager of website Himalayan Database, which tracks ascents on Everest and other peaks. Bierling told Outside that the record for most ascents of Everest in a single season stands at three, and it is held by multiple Sherpa guides, all of whom are men. Shrestha wants to change that.

“I’m not doing this for my own material benefit—I haven’t thought to myself ‘oh, if I succeed I’ll be famous or get this benefit,’”Shrestha said. “I want to see what female climbers are capable of. The challenge for me isn’t with a record—it’s a challenge with myself.”

Ascending the peak that many times in one season requires incredible strength and stamina, as well as some luck. Climbers arrive in Everest Base Camp in early April to begin acclimatizing to the thin air, and the official summit season begins when guides complete the fixed ropes to the summit, usually during the second week of May. The season ends when the summer monsoons roll up the Khumbu Valley and engulfs the peak in clouds, often in early June.

Most climbers complete multiple rounds of acclimatization ascents on the peak in late April and early May before pushing for the summit during a two-week window of good weather. A storm or period of high winds can upend the schedule and force climbers down to lower elevations.

After making it back down, they rest and recover from the arduous ascent.

Shrestha, meanwhile, must acclimatize and then climb the peak three times during a two-week window, somehow allowing her body to rest and recover between each ascent. But she is well on her way to completing her goal—Shrestha spoke to Outside shortly after returning to Base Camp from her second trip to the summit. On Sunday, May 19, she reached the top at 3 A.M. and watched the sunrise from the roof of the world.

“I’m tired—I haven’t really slept since May 9 when I left Base Camp,” she told Outside on Monday, May 20. “I returned and have rested one night, but I honestly haven’t rested that well. I’ll get to sleep after I reach the summit again.”

For her second trip to the top, Shrestha pushed for the summit earlier than most—climbers typically leave Camp IV at midnight to reach the top by mid-morning. By then, Shrestha was already well on her way down the peak. The strategy, she said, was to avoid the 200 or so climbers hoping to reach the summit that day.

“When I just went up for my second time, many climbers, Sherpas, and others were asking me why I wanted to do it again,” she said. “Now that I’m at Base Camp, I want to go up and do it again.”

Shrestha faced several physical challenges during her two ascents. On her first climb Shrestha was menstruating, which she says added fatigue and slowed her ascent. During her second climb she struggled with gastrointestinal issues and the dreaded “Khumbu cough,” a painful hack that climbers develop after breathing the thin, dry air at extreme altitude.

“I could have found a lot of excuses to stop but I haven’t,” she said. “I didn’t make these problems into excuses—I tried to make them into strengths.”

Her recovery regimen, thus far, has been simple: food, water, and attempts at sleeping.

She’s one of a handful of climbers who will tackle the peak more than once this year. Every year, a handful of seasoned Sherpa guides climb Everest twice. Kami Rita Sherpa, the famed guide who has ascended the peak 29 times, often ticks off two summits each season. This year a Nepali named Dawa Finjok Sherpa is attempting to scale the peak four times—he completed his summits on May 12, 17, and then 20th.

Like these Sherpa climbers, Shrestha has ample experience at high altitude. She’s ascended eight of the world’s 14 peaks that stand above 8,000 meters and climbed Everest in 2018 and K2 in 2023. In 2021 she became the first Nepali woman to ascend 26,7945-foot Dhaulagiri.

It’s a laborious and expensive goal, and Shrestha, who works as a photojournalist, says she is bootstrapping this expedition. She tried to attract sponsors to help pay for the trip, but says the market for a female climber in Nepal was weak. To fund the trip she took out a loan from the guiding company that is supplying Sherpa support on the peak, 8K Expedition. She said she had to put down 30 percent of the value of her expedition. By her calculations, the entire mission will cost approximately $56,000.

The cost, she said, is worth it—if she can attain her personal goal.

“I’m successful in the mountains because of what I have within,” she said. “Everest has accepted me, I think. Look at how many times people try to climb it and can’t succeed. I’m lucky.”