The Mountain Queen: Lhakpa Sherpa's Historic Return from the Summit

In the spring of 2000, an unspoken sorrow hung over the high valleys of the Solukhumbu. Seven years earlier, in April 1993, the celebrated national heroine Pasang Lhamu Sherpa had achieved the historic milestone of becoming the first Nepali woman to stand atop Mount Everest—only to perish on the descent near the South Summit. In the years that followed, an ominous myth had taken root in Nepal: that the goddess Chomolungma would not permit her daughters to return alive from her crown.

A twenty-six-year-old woman from Balakharka named Lhakpa Sherpa set out to destroy that superstition forever.

Born to the High Pastures

Lhakpa was born in 1973 in the rugged Makalu wilderness, one of eleven siblings in an impoverished yak-herding family. While boys in her village were sent to school, Lhakpa was kept at home, hauling firewood and tending livestock on steep Himalayan hillsides. Fascinated by the majestic snow massifs that pierced the sky, she dreamed of carrying loads on high-altitude expeditions.

At age fifteen, she tucked her long braids beneath a wool hat and joined an expedition as a kitchen boy, carrying heavy seventy-pound baskets through freezing river torrents. Her natural strength and endurance were so immense that expedition leaders soon realized she outclimbed most seasoned male porters. When she asked for permission to train as a climbing guide, elders warned her that the mountains were no place for women.

Leading the Millennium Women

By late 1999, Lhakpa had gathered a cohort of determined Sherpa women and formed the Millennium Nepalese Women’s Mount Everest Expedition. Securing modest funding, she took on the role of expedition leader. Entering the Khumbu in April 2000, Lhakpa confronted dangerous serac collapses in the Khumbu Icefall and freezing blizzards on the Lhotse Face with unyielding resolve.

On the night of May 17, 2000, Lhakpa stepped out of Camp IV at the South Col alongside her brother Mingma Babu Sherpa. Through the dark hours of the early morning, they methodically tackled the Balcony, the knife-edge snow ridge of the South Summit, and the treacherous rock obstacles of the Hillary Step.

At daybreak on May 18, 2000, Lhakpa Sherpa stood on the summit of Mount Everest at 8,848 meters. The sun illuminated the great horseshoe of Nuptse and Lhotse beneath her crampons. She had touched the sky, but she knew the true battle had only begun: the curse of Everest could only be broken at Base Camp.

The Historic Descent

With supreme tactical discipline, Lhakpa did not pause to revel in triumph. Keeping her breathing measured and carefully clipping the frozen safety lines, she reversed the Hillary Step, negotiated the sheer drop-offs of the South Summit, and guided her team through the howling gale back down to Camp IV.

The following day, descending through the Western Cwm and negotiating the gaping crevasses of the Khumbu Icefall, Lhakpa walked into Base Camp in full health, greeted by tears and cheers from the international climbing community. She had done what no Nepali woman before her had achieved: she had reached the top of the world and returned home alive.

An Unmatched Global Reign

That momentous day in May 2000 was merely the opening chapter of an athletic journey unmatched in mountaineering history. Over the subsequent two decades, while working quietly as an immigrant single mother and grocery store cashier in Connecticut, Lhakpa returned to the Himalayas almost every year. Climbing predominantly via the technical North Col route from Tibet without fanfare or corporate endorsements, she accumulated summit after summit.

In May 2022, she stood atop Mount Everest for a world-record tenth time, followed immediately by a triumphant ascent of K2 in Pakistan. Chronicled in the global documentary Mountain Queen, Lhakpa Sherpa transformed personal hardship into universal triumph, forever cementing her place as the queen of high-altitude alpinism.