KARACHI: Pakistan’s young mountaineer Shehroze Kashif, on Tuesday, added another feather to his cap when he became the youngest person to scale 8,126 metre world’s 9th highest peak Nanga Parbat.
Shehroze’s team confirmed that the 20-year-old Lahore-based mountaineer reached the Nanga Parbat top on Tuesday morning at around 8:54am Pakistan time. The summit is the 8th climb of over 8,000 metre of his career. He was already the youngest climber to summit the Mount Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu and the Broad Peak.
Kashif is eyeing to become the youngest climber ever in the world to summit all 14 8-thousanders in the world. This record is currently with Nepal’s Mingma David who summitted all top peaks at the age of 30 years and 166 days.
Britain’s Adriana Brownlee, who is currently 21, is also in quest to achieve that feat for youngest to climb all fourteen 8,000 metre peaks; she summitted Nanga Parbat on weekend and is now heading towards K2 base camp eyeing to summit The Broad Peak.
Shehroze next eyes climbing Gasherbrum 1 and Gasherbrum 2 in Gilgit before travelling to Nepal again later this year to summit Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu.
However, the Pakistani mountaineer fears that his mission can be jeopardised due to lack of sponsors and government support. He had last week regretted at the government’s approach, saying that he was committed a grant of one million rupees and was handed only Rs450,000 by the Pakistan Sports Board.
The young mountaineer has also created a public funding domain to gather support for his mission to create a world record. Along with Shehroze, another Pakistani climber Fazal Ali has also summitted Nanga Parbat. Fazal, who hails from Shimshal Valley, has previously summited K2 three times.