Who will be the first woman to conquer the world’s fourteen peaks over 8,000 meters? The race is heating up. Edurne Pasaban, a 36-year-old Spanish mountaineer, completed her thirteenth peak—Annapurna, standing at 8,091 meters—on the seventeenth, officially entering the final stretch. With just one more successful climb of Shishapangma, she will become the first female climber to achieve this remarkable feat.
Pasaban’s climbing team is set to head to Tibet in the coming days to prepare for the ascent of Shishapangma, which stands at 8,021 meters. However, obstacles remain—not only is Shishapangma a peak she has failed to summit four times, but she also faces competition from 44-year-old Korean climber Oh Eun-sun. Oh reached her thirteenth peak last August, taking an early lead in the women’s race for the fourteen 8,000-meter summits. But she failed in her October attempt on Annapurna and has since returned to the mountain to try again.
Close behind Oh Eun-sun and Pasaban is Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, who has already completed twelve peaks. She is set to begin her climb of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, next week, but still has to tackle the second highest and most challenging—and dangerous—peak: K2 (Mount Qogir).
Renowned as the greatest mountaineer of all time, Italian Reinhold Messner was the first to complete the challenge of conquering the fourteen peaks, achieving the feat in 1986. These fourteen sacred peaks of mountaineering are all located in Asia, spread across the Himalayas and the Karakoram Range.