Pakistan's Shehroze Kashif becomes youngest climber to scale 12 8-thousanders

KARACHI: Pakistan’s young mountaineer Shehroze Kashif moves closer to his goal of becoming the youngest to climb all 14 eight-thousanders in the world after he successfully summited 8,167m high Dhaulagiri-I in Nepal — the seventh-highest mountain in the world.

Shehroze started his final summit push last night and reached on top of Dhaulagiri early on Wednesday morning to take his tally of 8-Kers to 12.

At the age of 21, Shehroze is now the youngest to climb 12 peaks of over 8,000m in the world. There are total of 14 such peaks and Shehroze is to climb two more peaks, Cho-Oyu and Shishapangma, to achieve his target.

He surpassed the record of Nepal’s Mingma David Sherpa — Mingma also holds the record of being the youngest to climb all 14 peaks of over 8,000m. The Nepalese achieved the feat at the age of 30 years.

Shehroze is the second and youngest Pakistani to scale Dhaulagiri-I. Before him, a renowned climber from Hunza Valley, Sirbaz Ali Khan was the only one from the country to stand atop this 8,167m feat.

He is also 2nd youngest to climb Dhaulagiri after Britain’s Adriana Brownlee. Brownlee was aged 20 years and 10 months when she summited the seventh-highest peak in the year 2021.

Known as “Broad Boy” for his feat of climbing 8,051m high Broad Peak at the age of 17, Shehroze holds the record of being the youngest climber atop several peaks of over 8,000m including K2 and Kangchenjunga.

After summiting Broad Peak in July 2019, the young climber scaled Mount Everest at the age of 19 in the year 2021. In the same year, he went to the top of K2 and Manaslu. In the year 2022 — Shehroze successfully climbed Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum-I and Gasherbrum-II.

Earlier this year, the young mountaineer went to the top of Annapurna — 10th highest mountain peak in the world.